Cursed Tides

by Jade Kerrion

  A spear of pure air sliced through the tangle of seaweed. The thick ropes binding Varun snapped. Severed strands floated in the water, once again lifeless, cut off from its source of dark magic.

  Varun sank. Ashe surged through the water and caught him. Panic quickened her heartbeat, but she pressed her mouth against his, and breathed into him.

  His lungs expanded. A bubble or two escaped from his nose. Several moments later, another bubble leaked out. The tightness around her chest eased. Varun was obviously a well-trained swimmer and diver. Even unconscious, his body was doing the right thing underwater. She just had to keep him supplied with air.

  She simply had to give him a part of her.

  Easier said…

  Her jaw taut, she leaned forward to fill his lungs again.

  It’s not a kiss.

  It was more, far more.

  It demanded her essence. In return, it imparted life. It gave everything to him and demanded nothing in return.

  If she were younger, naiver, and less cynical, she might have thought it was love.

  No longer a wide-eyed ingénue, Ashe knew duty when she saw it. With only three years to go before earning her soul, she could not afford any mistakes. She had slaved away long enough and hard enough for her slice of eternity. She was not going to screw up because Varun Zale was distantly related to a long-dead prince.

  Even if they both had the same tilt of the head when they were listening.

  Even though, from certain angles, under questionable lighting, there was enough similarity in their sculptured features to be mistaken for brothers. They had the same dark eyes that sparkled with laughter, gleamed with joy, or glowered with anger.

  With his eyes closed, however, Varun was easier to look at. It was easier to appreciate his masculine beauty—and he possessed a great deal of it—without getting sucked into him, as a person, and everything he represented. It was easier to remind herself that he was her job, a human to keep alive until his mission was done and his destiny played out.

  Ashe wrapped her arms around him and kicked toward the surface. More than once she stopped to breathe into him. Each time, she rolled her eyes. Humans did not belong in the water, scuba gear or not. She swam toward the outline of the Veritas, its engines silent. She possessed enough strength and certainly enough power to propel herself and Varun out of the water to land on the deck, but no one needed to be alarmed—or clued in—yet as to her lack of human-ness. Instead, she broke the surface close to the ship.

  No one was looking at her. Everyone was probably leaning over the other side of the ship, where she had entered the water.

  Varun hacked a wet-sounding cough. His eyelashes fluttered. Bewildered brown eyes locked on her face. “Ash…Asherah?”

  “Captain. Or just Ashe.” She threw the correction directly into his mind. She hadn’t gone by Asherah in hundreds of years.

  He coughed again, and his head fell back.

  Great. I’m stuck in the water with the fainting beauty. Ashe threw her thoughts out to Jinn.

  The parrot squawked, “Look lively, boys. Captain overboard. Portside.”

  Feet scurried across the deck. A head peeked over the railing. “It’s the captain, and Varun!”

  Jackson flung life preservers to her. “You two, lower the ladder and get down there. Looks like Varun’s going to need help getting back on board.”

  The process was unwieldy but efficient. Two ladders were lowered, close to each other, and two brawny crew members clambered down. Supporting Varun between them, they hoisted him back onto the ship. By the time Ashe climbed onto the deck, the two men were already carrying Varun to the infirmary.

  “You all right?” Jackson asked. “What happened down there?”

  She signed, and Jinn interpreted for her. “Technical difficulties.”

  A frown furrowed his brow. “Seaweed issues?”

  Ashe’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”

  “We could see it from the surface. The seaweed moved, and it wasn’t from the wind or current. It wasn’t from any motion beneath either, like swimmers brushing against it. The seaweed moved on its own, like it was alive.”

  Sometimes, the worst part of her job was downplaying the truth others occasionally glimpsed. General panic was the last thing she needed. “Could you have imagined it?”

  “We all saw it. Varun’s diving mask floated up within seconds of you diving in. How did you know he was in trouble? How is he even still alive, underwater all that time without air?”

  Ashe scowled. The only thing more annoying than a clueless man was an observant one. She tugged her hair over her shoulder and squeezed the water out of it. “I’m going to dry off. You have the bridge, Mr. Jackson.”

  He straightened, as if suddenly reminded of who she was. “Yes, captain.”

  Ashe glanced back before she stepped off the deck. Jackson still wore that thoughtful furrow between his brows.

  Far above the ship, thin streaks of clouds in the clear blue sky swilled into the dark promise of a storm.

  Chapter 5

  “Varun! Damn it! Will you wake up?”

  The panicked edge of Ondine’s voice blasted through Varun’s cocoon of darkness. He shoved instinctively to a sitting position, but flung his hand over his face as he recoiled from the piercing lights. A low, persistent roar set up a matching throbbing in his brain. “Wha...? Wait… I…”

  “You have to talk to her.” His girlfriend’s voice warbled in his ear.

  He could make out Ondine’s individual words, but taken as a whole, he had no idea what they meant. Varun lowered his hand, but kept his eyes narrowed against the too-bright lights. He looked around, his mind haphazardly piecing together the mental snapshots of his surroundings. The vibrating bass too loud to be white noise was the ship’s engines. The walls, covered with framed medical charts, reflected the glare of the florescent lights. The familiar scent of antiseptic cleaner tickled his nostrils. He was in the infirmary on the Veritas.

  He was safe.

  Varun blinked at Ondine as her face shifted into focus. “Who?”

  The flickering terror in her eyes vanished behind a curtain of rage. “The captain.” Her trembling voice steeled; he had always known that she resorted to anger whenever she was most fearful. “Can you believe how reckless she is?”

  “What?”

  “She abandoned the ship. She actually jumped overboard to find you.”

  His scattered thoughts wove into a tangled knot. “She did?” For an instant, Varun had the vaguest recollection of seeing the captain’s face, her dark hair wet, seawater glistening on her skin. Hadn’t it been a dream?

  “Another diver was about to go in for you, but she stopped him and went instead. She endangered the entire ship for one person.”

  “She saved me?”

  “The other diver could just as easily have saved you. It’s not her role to be the hero. What would have happened to all of us on the ship if she’d died?”

  “Is the captain all right?”

  Ondine glared at him, her hands on her hips. “Is that the only thing you can think of? Of course she’s all right. And now she refuses to take us out of the Sargasso Sea.”

  “What?”

  “Bad weather outside of the sea, or so she says. I don’t like her. I don’t trust a word of what she’s saying.”

  “If there are storms—”

  “She can just sail around the storm, can’t she? I want to get home now. My father hired this ship, but she won’t listen to me at all.”

  Varun held up his hand. It was too much, too fast. “She’s the captain—”

  “Stop defending her!” Ondine hissed. “You’re blind if you can’t see that something is wrong with her. All you men are blind because she’s got a pretty face. I can feel it. She gives off all the wrong vibes. Something is seriously wrong on this ship—and it’s her.” Fear crept back into her voice.

  A low chuckle came from the open doorway. “If you two are done sha
ring your private squabbles with the entire crew, I’d like to check on my patient.”

  Ondine spun around and glared at Corey, the ship’s medic. His salt-and-pepper beard and kindly gleam in his eyes had bestowed on him the nickname Santa. His movements were brisk and economical as he took Varun’s blood pressure and listened to his heartbeat. “You’re surprisingly fine for being underwater for as long as you were without your diving equipment.”

  “I did lots of sponge diving years ago. Got a great deal of practice holding my breath.”

  “Maybe so, but ten minutes is a long time, whether or not you’ve had practice.”

  Varun’s eyes widened. “Ten minutes?”

  “Give or take a few seconds. We had a stopwatch going from the time we saw your diving mask float up till the captain returned with you.” Corey put his stethoscope away. “X-ray shows your lungs are clear, but I’d recommend you take it easy for a day or two before going back down there.” Corey looked up; their eyes met. “What happened down there? How did you lose your equipment?”

  “I…I’m not really sure.”

  “Was anyone else down there?”

  “No. It was the seaweed. I got tangled up in it.”

  Corey shook his head. “That doesn’t make any sense. You could just brush it away. There’s nothing to get tangled up in to the point of losing your mask and equipment.”

  “No,” Varun agreed, frowning. His memories were hazy, probably the aftermath of oxygen deprivation. He had to have imagined the seaweed coming alive, moving toward him like arms, stripping him of his equipment. “Why did the captain go down for me?”

  Corey shrugged. “Dave was about to head down. He’d fully suited up, but at the last moment, the captain stopped him. She kicked off her boots, tossed aside her jacket, and dove into the water.”

  “Without equipment?” Varun asked. Another memory sizzled to the fore. Had he really seen the captain’s face in the water—fully visible, not hidden behind a diving mask? “If she was down there for ten minutes—how could she even…?”

  “Don’t know. Jackson tried to get some answers, but the captain wasn’t in the answering mood.”

  Ondine leaped back into the conversation. “I’ve told you. Something is wrong. The captain—she’s just not normal. I know it.” She pressed her hand to her stomach. “Every time I look at her, it feels…off.”

  “Captain’s an excellent swimmer,” Corey said. “Who knows? Maybe she grew up diving for sponges too.”

  “This isn’t a joke.” Ondine folded her arms across her chest. “Something’s seriously wrong with her, and I’ll prove it.” Her green eyes narrowed. “She’s a witch.”

  Varun stifled a sigh. “It’s the twenty-first century. We don’t do witches anymore, Ondine.”

  Corey nodded. “Besides, it’s more politically correct to call them wiccans or some such. Anyway, I’m ready to write up a clean bill of health, provided you take it easy for the rest of the day. Did you get what you went down for?”

  Varun stared down at his hands. Did he?

  Nothing. There had been nothing in the water, except seaweed—

  A flicker of motion caught his eye as a shadow beside the door turned silently away.

  The captain. Ashe.

  There had been nothing in the water, except seaweed and Ashe.

  The cool night welcomed Ashe back on the deck. She did not need to glance around to know that she was alone. The shifting air molecules confirmed it for her.

  She relished the silence and solitude. She needed space to think.

  Varun was right. She was wrong.

  Ashe might have been more than slightly miffed if she had not been infinitely more worried. Something was terribly wrong, and it was not just another human-wrought ecological disaster in the making.

  Something deeper and darker was at work.

  She walked along the edge of the ship. The water was smooth and inky dark beneath a moonless sky. Only her unnatural senses allowed her to catch glimpses of silver streaks weaving through the black. Sleek, swift.

  The merfolk, as they were known in myths and legends.

  They called themselves the Beltiamatu. Lords of the Ocean. Lords of the Abyss.

  That ancient race anchored the ocean’s heartbeat. They would have the answers. They would know why dark magic was polluting the ocean, and they would know how to reverse it.

  Ashe frowned at the silver shapes darting past the research vessel. The nearest Beltiamatu colony was several hundred leagues away. There was little reason for the merfolk to be in the Sargasso Sea—unless she were the reason. The merfolk, although not elementals themselves, were protective of the ocean, and they would have known that a Daughter of Air had intruded upon their realm—even if they would not have known that it was her. They would have rallied to repel the air elementals who had abducted one of their royal princesses.

  Never mind that their royal princess, heir to the Beltiamatu throne, had voluntarily chosen temporary servitude to the Daughters of Air instead of the permanence of death. Facts, apparently, did not count for anything in reality. Ashe drew a deep, unsteady breath. With her decision, she had not just destroyed individual lives. She had set entire species at war.

  Were the Beltiamatu circling the ship to keep her out of the water? How could she begrudge the enmity the merfolk bore for the Daughters of Air? From the merfolk’s perspective, she had been ripped from her duty as princess of the Beltiamatu. She had been torn from the embrace of her father and her half-sisters, and she had broken the family ties that anchored their hierarchical society.

  She had abandoned even her—

  Her thoughts fractured. The pain in her chest crushed mental clarity. Her arms ached as she cradled the phantom warmth of a memory. Without any effort, she remembered how he smelled, how he felt. How she felt, holding him—as if the world were perfectly right, and could never again be entirely wrong.

  All that, she had lost.

  The water quivered. The surface split.

  Ashe slammed air molecules together, packing them into a dense formation as impenetrable as a steel wall.

  Something struck the invisible wall and dropped to the deck.

  She picked up the gleaming platinum spear. A slick, dark liquid coated the edge. Pufferfish venom, no doubt. Although it could not hurt her, she did not touch it.

  The merfolk were trying to kill her.

  Did they know they could not hurt her? Her essence was air, her physical body held together only by astral energy. She could vanish, dissipate, and she would always still return, reforming as effortlessly as a sea breeze.

  Physically, she could not be hurt.

  Emotionally—the ache in her heart sharpened to the point of a knife, so sharp, so vivid, she could almost feel herself writhe against it.

  Emotionally, she could be destroyed.

  Chapter 6

  Varun stepped onto the deck to find the captain alone as she often was. The moonlight, concealed behind heavy storm clouds, blanketed the sea in darkness, but the meager running lights on the ship’s deck framed the captain in a pale orange glow, casting her features partly into shadow. She wore a thoughtful frown as she studied something in her hand.

  He squinted. From a distance, it almost looked like a spear, but it was like no spear he had ever seen. The entire thing glowed as if made out of precious metal.

  “Captain,” he called out so as not to startle her.

  She did not move, but wings fluttered behind him. He twisted around and was smacked by feathers as Jinn flew past him to land on her shoulder. The bird fixed small black eyes on him. The shape of its beak should have made frowns impossible. Even so, it seemed as if the parrot were scowling.

  Really, Varun chided himself. He had to work on reducing the imagined offense of a bird. It was just a bird.

  The captain set down the spear she had been examining. Her fingers danced a response, and Jinn squawked, “What do you want?”

  Her question was not exactly f
riendly, but it rated better than “get lost.” Varun cleared his throat. “I wanted to thank you for coming down after me.”

  She said nothing.

  “I didn’t realize you were a free diver too.”

  Still nothing.

  It was like talking to a brick wall.

  A brick wall with a feathered fiend perched on top of it.

  “I’m going back down there,” he said.

  Her eyes narrowed. Her fingers flickered. “Absolutely not.”

  “Do you know what I saw down there?” He paused for a moment. “Nothing. I saw nothing. No fish. No invertebrates. The nurseries tucked between the seaweed, they are all gone. There’s nothing, except—” He hesitated, trying to separate facts from hallucinations as a result of oxygen deprivation when he somehow lost his diving mask.

  Seaweed did not move of its own accord, not in an ocean without current. It did not—could not—reach out and entrap swimmers. As for his diving equipment failure, he could not imagine how he had screwed up, but he had to have screwed up. There was no other logical explanation for it.

  Varun cleared his throat. “I want to check out other spots in the Sargasso Sea. I need to know if the damage is localized or if the sea is now stripped of all marine life.”

  “You’re not going back down there. No one is.”

  “The Veritas was chartered specifically to research the dead spots in the ocean. I can’t just dip a bucket into the ocean for water samples. I have to be down there. I need to look around.”

  “No.”

  “Something is wrong, captain. I’m convinced of it now. This isn’t about overfishing. This isn’t about industrial or commercial waste even though there’s a country-sized land mass of plastic floating in the ocean. What I saw—” He grimaced. “I don’t know exactly what I saw, but it was trying to hurt me. I know the water. I’ve lived beside it all my life, played in it for as long as I can remember. The sea, the ocean, is my home in a way you can never understand. I saw—I thought I saw—” Hell, who cares if she thinks I’m mad, just like my family? “The seaweed moved; it didn’t just sway in the current. It moved with deliberate intent to attack me.” He swept his hand out over the Sargasso Sea, quiescent and deceptively at peace. The night air stagnated, unmoving over the surface of the water. “Something big is happening down there. Something wrong. Something I can’t explain based on what I know.” He shook his head. “All the science, all the technology, in the world may not help if we don’t know more about what is actually going on. I have to get back to the water.”