“Excuse me? I didn’t quite catch that?” I feel the electricity I had been able to muster recently prickling beneath my flesh, I taunt him with it, learning control of the ability in moments, sending his neurons firing like an execution squad, lethal and precise.
“Shit,” I hear the guttural exclamation pass from his lips before I slam his head back into the rock face from which we’ve come.
“What did you say? About me being a tease? I’d say let’s go all the way Daryl, really I would, but I don’t think you can handle it,” I let another pulse of electricity loose on his nervous system and he struggles against my grip, choking for breath as I cover his gills with my fingers, forcing them shut.
“Don’t you like that? Maybe you shouldn’t lust after women you can’t handle!” I bite out the words, letting free one last pulse of electricity into his body, before slamming his skull into the wall.
I release his throat from my clawed grasp and watch him fall through the water to the ground of crushed bones and dead things, where he belongs. I can see that the eyes of the Psiren army from below are on me, including those of Solustus.
“You want to screw with me?! I invite any of you to try, I’m only too willing to teach all of you the same lesson. I’m not the kind of girl you fuck with. Not anymore.” I yell the sentiment out to them, hearing the loudness of my voice reverberating back at me from the walls of the deep sea cave. I feel the power of my ability to cause pain flowing through me, making me untouchable. As I turn to move back into the darkness of the cave I hear Vex’s British tone reach me.
“Well what do you know, there’s hope for Little Miss Priss yet.”
SOLUSTUS
The girl moves, turning around and retreating back into the cave from which she came. I can’t quite get my mind around the concept of what I am seeing, she now not only acts with the power of my predecessor, but also looks like one of us, a poor imitation to be sure, but the darkness within her is evident and clearly ill-controlled.
The fodder turns toward me, their eyes are wide, unsure of what I expect from them. I wonder why they’re such mindless, pathetic drones. I look over to the crumpled body of Darius, the boy I made to undo Miss Callie Pierce, limp among the bones of things too weak to survive among us. Well I suppose he is where he belongs. The fodder takes my looking to his defeated form as instruction to go and help him, but I give a warning look.
“No! He doesn’t deserve our help. He was bested by a little girl, no more, no less. Let him rot,” I snap and they nod. “Today I want you to pair up and fight one another until one of you is dead. Remember, it is not waste if you learn something and we can always make more of you. You are utterly and completely replaceable. So, fight well and you’ll make it to training tomorrow. A gift in itself. The knowledge I’m imparting is the most valuable thing you will find down here,” I issue the order and watch Vexus begin to move. “Not you Vexus. You’re coming with me,” I gesture for him to follow with a long bony finger, moving with all the speed I can muster back up into my throne room. I wish to observe the fighting from up high, so I can look down on them as they struggle to survive under my command. The boy lags behind me, making it to the throne room at the pace of a one legged tortoise. Pitiful.
“By all means, move at a glacial pace. I’m not getting any older, just impatient and irritated, that’s not something you want,” I seep sarcasm but Vexus remains impassive in his features. I look into his eyes and wonder what it would take for me to instil some fear into their hideous lilac depths. Probably not a lot, but this boy has been surprising me lately. Especially now that I know of his connection with the girl, something which my own prodigy has clearly failed to capture.
I move to the window to observe the fighting. “Come,” I invite him to hover next to me, generous as always.
“Why did you want to see me?” Vexus asks, looking back over his shoulder, suspicious. I feel sort of proud, as though his paranoia is a sign that I’m succeeding in my teachings. He doesn’t trust anyone, least of all me and that’s exactly what makes him easily manipulated. Someone who can’t trust is alone, and someone alone is weak. Everyone knows that.
“I wanted to congratulate you on your relationship with the girl, this proves most useful to me. I am pleased,” at these words I expect him to look surprised but he doesn’t, he just stares out the window.
“It was nothing. I just took her to a party. Gave her a little lionfish venom.” I look over at him, Lionfish venom? Well that explains why half my army was turning up looking like they’d spent the night in a barroom brawl. It was because they had.
“Party?” I ask him with an eyebrow raised. I know the Psiren’s in my city aren’t on duty 24/7 but I didn’t assume they actually had lives. It startles me, the idea of unity among their ranks. They aren’t supposed to have minds of their own, connections with each other. They have two purposes and those are to kill and die… it is only a question of when and how.
“Yeah.”
“I find it interesting that you’re all off having a good old time and your fighting still isn’t up to scratch,” I mutter, running one of my sharp, clawed nails along my teeth.
“It’s good for morale. Having something to look forward to, makes them work harder,” Vexus makes the point and I wonder why he thinks he has the authority to tell me what’s best for my army.
“You know what else makes people work hard, Vexus? The threat you’re going to chop off parts of their lower extremities,” I sneer and he looks at me with his eyebrow cocked.
“That is true, but you said you were pleased about me getting in good with Little Miss Priss and that’s how I did it,” he reminds me of his relationship with the girl and I remember the reason I asked him up here in the first place.
“With regard to the girl, I want you to help her. I need her for what I have planned and I need her trained up to fight, to control the power she has over darkness. Show her a good time, do whatever you need to, but I want her dark, Vex. I want her killing humans. I want her phasing. You know what I’m asking, don’t you?” I look at him, serious in my expression.
“I get it, you want her dark, but I don’t know why you don’t do that yourself. You’re the one with the power here and it’s not like she’s in love with me,” Vex looks irritable and I wonder why, I’m bestowing a great honour on him in giving him this task.
“She tends to spit venom when I’m around. Darkness, it needs to be coaxed out of her. She needs to accept it as a part of who she is and embrace it. That requires a more… personal touch.” Vex looks like he might burst out laughing at this statement, at the idea of my incapability to carry out the task. I consider briefly striking him across the face.
“Mate, if you think I have better luck in keeping her calm, you’re wrong. She’d start an argument with a wall if it looked like it might question her authority. She’s got more rage than you’d expect for someone so… perky,” Vex laughs at the thought. I wonder momentarily if I’m seeing fondness for the girl or amusement at her futile expression of the darkness within. I decide it’s the second, the first being too strange to contemplate or allow.
“Then find out what it is that’s fuelling the rage. Use it. I need her dark. It’s vital to our overthrowing of the mer. Do you understand?” I place my hand on his shoulder, sort of like a father, a real father, entrusting his son with a family secret.
“Yeah mate, I get it,” he calls me by that hideous nickname again and I snarl.
“I’m not your mate,” I remind him, feeling my rage crest as he waves away my remark like it were nothing but smoke. I want to pound him into the dust, I want to crack his bones and shred his organs but in this moment I bite my tongue, looking down over the Cryptopolis as I watch my fodder fighting each other. They’ve turned on each other so easily, so mindlessly under my command and it makes me realise that whilst Vex is infuriatingly blasé, at least he has a mind of his own, and that mind isn’t stupid enough to disobey me. I need the majority of them stupid, this is true, b
ut what harm can one extra pair of eyes do? After all, the second I want him dead he shall be so.
I feel him move across the throne room, but then something catches my attention. He’s still in the doorway, turned, deviating from his path, staring with the intensity of the sun for which I was so named. I follow his line of sight and find where it lies. The black and violet, steel alloy trident. Titus’ weapon, something he had taken from another mer warrior by force eons ago.
“What are you looking at boy? Get the hell out and do the job I assigned you!” I bark and he takes one last long look at the trident, intense and unwavering before he turns and reluctantly leaves the room.
I turn my back on the city, moving toward the giant mirrored surface at the back of the chamber and picking up the trident on my way there. I hold the weapon, thinking of its history. For something Titus was particularly fond of, he rarely used it and I can see why. The trident isn’t particularly dangerous looking and I could name a hundred newer and more lethal weapons. Maybe it was sentimentalism, the fool, thinking it made him like Poseidon, father of our race. I throw the trident to one side, realising it as a useless display piece, one for looking strong but nothing more, not like Scarlette, who looked meagre but could slice a man in half without so much as a falter in her swing.
The trident clatters against the floor and slides into the shadows, next to the Scythe of Atargatis, which as it turns out, is becoming far more difficult to utilise than I could have ever anticipated.
CALLIE
Since my little outburst with Daryl, or whatever he calls himself now, the Psirens of the Cryptopolis are keeping their distance. Vex is now even giving me one on one training at the request of Solustus, which is leaving me exhausted but satisfied. I realise now there is a lot about my own senses I don’t know or utilise effectively when it comes to awareness of what’s around me. I feel powerful, more so than I had in the Occulta Mirum in spite of the crown they’d placed upon my head. It’s not adoration or shallow envy that has led the other Psirens to bend to me, it is respect. It is the knowledge that I could take down any one of them, just like I had Daryl, with just a touch of my flesh to theirs. I’d always wanted to be liked, or so I thought, but fear is a tad more refreshing and works a lot quicker than the friendly alternative. It doesn’t mean I am their equal, it means I am better than them. I don’t hate it like I thought I would, it keeps me warm on the cold floor of Vex’s cave during the chill nights where I lie on my back, blackened tailfin in the air, trying to forget Orion and letting my anger at his stupidity simmer silently beneath my skin. The feeling of superiority, that I am right in all of this, has become the more favourable option, especially when compared with listlessly desiring Orion every second we were apart.
I wonder now how I did it, allowing my life to revolve around a man.
It is something I swore I’d never do after watching my mother fall victim to Carl’s venomous vice. But somehow I had fallen, just as she had, into the same trap.
I think back to Orion, his face, his lips, and his eyes… those eyes… NO! I hear the voice inside my skull reverberating, like a battle cry, over and over, every time I think of him in any minute detail. I won’t go back there. I was young and foolish, but I am different now. This place has changed me. Correction… is still changing me.
“Callie, focus,” I hear Vex’s Britishness and disdain seep through the water toward me. I can’t see him, but I know he’s somewhere out there in the shadow, ready to take me any which way he wants, leaving me bruised, sore and angry.
“I’m trying,” I mutter, irritated at his lack of impress. We are floating in the crevasse, high above the jellyfish guarded entrance to the city which I had oh-so-gracefully navigated my first time finding the Cryptopolis. I look back on that now and cringe. The abyss is consuming both of us, but that’s the point, I’m learning to fight without my eyes.
“Try harder. Focus. A Psiren is at his best when he’s in the dark so you need to be too. Feel me.” Vex has become like some sadistic version of sensei to my grasshopper these last few weeks. I snort at the comment ‘feel me’, thinking that’s the last thing I’d rather do and yet I can’t stop myself from admiring his body every chance I get. It sure as hell isn’t love, I mean the man has the personality of a troll, but something inside me is lusting after something new and tempting.
I push this thought out of my head as I still for a moment, closing my eyes, allowing myself to hold steady in the water for a little while. I feel a tiny movement in the water to my left, no… too small. It’s probably some kind of squid or fish. I concentrate on my breathing, sucking in cool stagnant water and breathing it out again through my gills. I feel him, for just a second, but he’s there. I snap sideways, hand ready to strike him in his solar plexus but he catches my hand.
“Uh…uh…uh,” he says it, a staccato of dirty promise as he licks his lips. “No spanking, Princess. You’ll have to be quicker than that to get me over bended knee.”
“Why are you so depraved?” I spit at him. He always knows how to make me disgusted, so why am I feeling disappointed that he is denying me touching privileges?
“I was made that way, Love,” he saunters back into the shadows and out of view. I turn again and close my eyes, ready to try and focus on his scent, his movement… anything that can give me a hint as to where I need to turn to best him. I’m using the senses of a hunter, the senses of something primal that has long been disconnected from who I thought I was. I breathe in water, the taste metallic, and the scent of him wafts into my nasal cavity, trapped in the liquid that’s flooding down the back of my throat and out through my gills again. I turn, seeking his scent, placing him correctly and hitting him smack damn in the middle of the throat. The impact of my strike sends him flying backwards into the shadow again. Well, I think to myself, that’ll teach him.
It didn’t.
Days pass and I start to harden, my body, my mind. My muscles become more defined and my tailfin moves with a preciseness I haven’t ever felt before. My body has gained a sense of wholeness, each limb working with its connective in seamless time. My mind starts to work with a sensory awareness that has only come to me after hours spent with Vex in the darkness of the deep. Yet there’s still something he wants from me that I can’t quite reach. A speed and an intuition of a predator that I can’t quite let go enough to gain. I hang in the crevasse once more, frustrated and irritable as Vex talks at me.
“So, for today’s mind-blowing wisdom we’re going to be setting you against me.”
“We’ve done that already, so if you’re going for mind-blowing…”
“I’m gonna get touchy feely, Love. We haven’t done that yet and I can guarantee you, it will be mind-blowing,” he smirks and I move backwards.
“What the hell is wrong with you… did you not see what I did to Daryl, did you not hear the big speech? What do I need a billboard that says ‘Callie will kick your ass, back the hell off?’” I cross my arms, cocking my brow, a move inspired by him. He laughs.
“Not what I meant, Pet, but glad to know your mind is in the gutter, despite you saying otherwise,” he purrs out the words and his tentacles undulate, spreading out and wrapping around me suggestively.
“You’re going to attack me using your tentacles?” I look at him, surprised. He nods. I feel a shudder of fear move through me as I think of the unwilling pleasure at their velvet crush brushing up against my scales.
“You need to have the speed with two arms that I have with ten. Speed will be your greatest asset. Especially when it comes to Solustus,” he looks me straight in the eyes and for a second I see the man behind the innuendos and sarcasm.
“Why do you care about Solustus beating me…” I look at him, suspicious.
“I don’t, I don’t care about him killing you either,” he looks straight at me, nostrils flaring slightly, like I’ve caught him off guard.
“Oh… well that’s good. Don’t want to mistake your intent for compassion.”
“So you’re going to teach me how to beat you? Aren’t you worried I’ll take you down?” I look at him seriously and he snorts.
“I’m not worried. Let’s put it that way.”
“Why not?!” I ask him, annoyed at his lack of respect for me in spite of all I have mastered.
“You wouldn’t take me down, you’re too busy being angry at everyone and everything to be a real threat,” he licks his bottom lip and I falter in my strokes, letting myself fall slightly from his eye level, surprised.
“I’m not angry…” I start but he laughs, cutting me off.
“Don’t lie on my behalf, Love. I’ve watched you trying to sleep at night, tossing and turning, exhaling like an asthmatic. I know anger when I see it and you, Pet, are angry,” he points a stubby finger at me and I look at him.
“So?” I ask him and he laughs again.
“So? So, it’s stopping you from really being lethal. You’re too rage fuelled to see the woods through the trees. Real power, real violence comes from a logical calm that is seven steps ahead of its prey. Surely you’ve realised that by now. Solustus is always telling us that’s what caused the guy before him to snuff it,” he looks at me, serious for once, and unassuming. He is reaching deep into me, trying to pull out the truth of my rage. I recoil.
“Titus,” I mutter the word, like it’s a curse, magical and terrible all at once.
“Yeah. His rage, it blinded him. He wasn’t observing what was around him closely enough.” I think about the truth of what he’s saying.
It was true; if Titus had been paying attention more closely he might have known Azure had been lying to him, playing him for the fool. I ponder this for a moment.
“I guess… I am pretty mad,” I bite my bottom lip, self-conscious for the first time in ages.
The Kiss That Saved Me (The Tidal Kiss Trilogy Book 2) Page 17