Storm Chaser (Storms of Blackwood Book 3)

by Elle Middaugh

  "Because that's how he died," Rob said flatly. "Fighting this ugly bastard."

  I turned and stared at the hydra once more and realized one of his eyes was, in fact, missing. It only had seven instead of eight. "What happened to the eye that Captain Brinewurst dislodged?"

  No one missed the suggestion in my tone.

  "You think the hydra's missing eye is the Eye?" Cal asked. "The Eye of the Sea?"

  I shrugged. "I think any of the eight could be 'the Eye.' If what the captain said is true, then they each hold a magical energy that's probably strong enough to open a portal."

  "So, we don't need to find the elusive lost Eye," Criss said, putting the puzzle pieces together in his mind. "We just need to get one of the seven remaining?"

  I nodded. "That's my guess."

  "It's more than a guess," Ben told me with a wink. "I'd classify that as a theory, at least."

  I grinned as I bobbed on my board in the waves. "Why, thank you, Mr. Lexicon."

  He grinned back. "You're welcome, Mrs. Lexicon."

  Rob rolled his eyes. "Let's just take this thing down first. We'll deal with individual body parts later." Then, out of the blue, his attention was focused elsewhere. "What do you want?"

  Since no one was there, I assumed he was, yet again, speaking to a spirit.

  "Oh really? And you know this how?" Rob asked mockingly.

  All at once, the smug expression dropped off his face and he listened more intently.

  "How'd you get it?" Rob asked him, and I immediately perked up.

  "Get what? Is he talking about the Eye?" I asked eagerly, but Rob shushed me.

  The silence carried on for a while, so I figured the spirit was telling him a story of some sort. Well, not silence-silence. The hydras were still battling it out in the background, screeching and splashing and causing all sorts of a commotion. I had to grip my wooden board extra tight to keep from slipping off in the waves.

  "And where is it now?" Rob asked. There was a brief pause, during which his expression turned sour again. "Yeah, humans are dicks."

  "What happened?" I asked him.

  He glanced back at the spirit and nodded. "Thanks."

  Then he turned back to us.

  "The spirit that just left says he was in possession of a magical pearl a few years ago. He set the pearl in a ring, then paid Captain Brinewurst some coin to take him across the sea to Hydratica, where he intended to sell the item of jewelry for a small fortune. Along the way, however, the ship was attacked by a hydra—that hydra. The entire crew drowned, passengers and all."

  I immediately locked eyes with Ben. "That's the one!"

  He nodded quickly in response, an excited smile spreading across his tanned face.

  "What one?" Cal asked, looking from person to person almost suspiciously.

  "The fae who traded the faerie lights for the pearl," I told him.

  Rob cocked his head. "How'd you know the spirit was a fae?"

  I sighed. "Because Ben and I were talking to the man who made the trade with him."

  "Where's the Eye now?" Ben asked anxiously.

  Rob shook his head. "He says it was looted by some human fisherman. It could be anywhere now."

  "Son of a bitch," Ben muttered, just as I shouted, "Fuck!"

  "Yeah," Rob agreed grimly. "So, we're back to plan A: kill this fucker first, then worry about the Eye later."

  Unfortunately, that plan only looked good on paper. When it came to the execution, it was much more difficult than we imagined.

  Rob's spirits attacked the hydras from the air, but they kept forgetting and attacking Ash too. Ben's hold on the seaweed didn't last forever, and soon he could no longer see, hear, smell, taste, or touch. He had no idea what he was doing, and he eventually fell right off his raft and into the ocean. Cal swam over to help him, but the pair got caught in the hydras' scuffle and ended up headbutted by the damn thing. They were soon floating on water like Dan, who was just starting to come to.

  "Wha—?" Dan asked as his bleary eyes began to focus. "What happened?"

  Rob pointed skyward. "A hydra happened."

  Dan's eyes bugged out of his head. "Two hydras!"

  "Oh, that's just Ash," Rob said, brushing his brother's fear away like dust on the breeze. "But now that you're awake, we could really use some help."

  I'd been zapping balls of fire at the four-headed asshole, but its skin was thick and slick, and my flames only seemed to irritate it rather than damage it.

  Suddenly, a loud screech tore through the air and a stream of blood rained down on us. One of the bad hydra's heads was latched onto one of Ash's necks, its teeth tearing into his white-gold flesh.

  "No!" I shrieked in horror.

  Chrissen didn't hesitate. He dove into the water and swam right up to Ash's side. When his hands touched the hydra, healing magic instantly jolted through the sea creature's skin, rushing to the neck where the wound was still dripping blood.

  By the time he was finished healing Ash, he passed out right where he floated, slipping silently into the sea.

  "Criss!" I shouted, leaning so far over the edge of my raft that I damn near flipped it.

  "I got him," Dan said, using the water to lift not only Criss, but Cal and Ben as well, to the safety of a nearby board.

  Now that he was healed, Ash attacked the other hydra with renewed strength. Their heads flailed wildly, teeth snapping and gnashing, and the waters grew perilous once more. Waves far taller than me rocked my board and flipped me over, plunging me into the sea.

  Dan raised me up so I could breathe, but just as I resurfaced, another wave knocked me back under. From beneath the surface, I watched a hydra head smash into a board before Rob's motionless body crashed into the water in a frenzy of tiny bubbles.

  Fighting hard, I clawed toward the surface once more. When I found some air, I took a huge inhale, but as the water sucked at my body, I felt myself getting pulled closer to the fight.

  No, no, no, no!

  I kicked and splashed harder, struggling against the tug of the current, but if I couldn’t swim in placid water, then I sure as hell couldn't swim in this.

  Dan surfaced right beside me and wrapped his arm around my waist. "It's all right. I got you."

  I noticed Rob was now stacked on the board along side the other three, and none of them appeared to be waking.

  My heart hammered and tears formed in my eyes. This was really and truly it. We were going to die out here on the ocean, fighting a losing battle with a mythological creature. There was no way to survive this. The chances were just too slim.

  "Come on," Dan said as he swam in the guys' direction. "There's another board over there for you to hold onto."

  But we never made it.

  A loud screech ripped through the air, and just as I turned back to see what had happened, a fucking hydra head smashed down into us, instantly turning my whole world black.

  Chapter 28

  GEMMA

  The sheets stirred, and Tristan kissed me before climbing out of bed.

  Most of the time, I slept right through that part. But every once in a while, I became conscious enough to crawl out of the warm covers and visit with him for a few minutes before he set sail.

  Dragging my sleepy ass into the kitchen, I filled a metal pot up to the brim with some freshwater we'd collected from a nearby stream and placed it beside the fish stew over the fire. While that heated, I sleepily ground a handful of coffee beans into a course powder and dumped them into a metal filter. When the pot finally whistled, I removed it from the flames and dropped in the coffee filter, smiling as the fresh scent of caffeine wafted up to my nose.

  Ah, the nectar of the gods.

  I poured Tris and me each a cup just as he came around the corner clad in his stained plaid dress shirt and those ass-fitting pants I loved so much. I reached around and squeezed his butt, but the damn thing didn't budge an inch. He was so ripped it was glorious.

  Our lips met, and I smiled against his m
outh. "Want to head back to bed for a few more minutes?"

  He chuckled. "The pants did it for you again, huh?"

  I nodded vigorously as I waggled my brows. "You're just such a sexy fisherman, Tris. And your ass looks even better outside of the pants than it does inside them. It only makes sense."

  He took the coffee cup from my hands and set it on the counter before hefting me up into his big, strong arms. "Is that right?"

  It was still dark outside, but the moonlight that filtered in lent a definite sort of mischief to the twinkle in his eyes.

  "Uh-huh." I giggled as he spun me around and headed back toward our bedroom, but that's when I saw the most disturbing thing ever out the kitchen window: bodies. Some tumbling in the surf, some already beached on the shore, none of them moving. "Tris!" I yelped, pointing out into the night.

  He quickly spun back around and peered through the glass. "Hades, Zeus, and Hera," he cursed as he set me back down on my feet. "Are those seals? Or are they human fucking corpses?"

  I squeaked as I shook my head. "I have no idea."

  "Shit." He grabbed his boots and hurriedly slipped them on.

  Panic hit me like a hammer to the chest. "Oh my gods, Tris, what are we going to do?"

  He grabbed my shoulders and stooped down to my level. "You're going to wait in here where its safe. I'm going to go out there and see if anyone is still alive."

  "No, wait!" I cried, reaching for him. But he was already out the door.

  I wanted to tell him he couldn't just go examining dead bodies on his own. That he was practically begging to be a murder victim in some unsolved mystery novel. I mostly read romances, but I'd read enough horror to know that this was a very, very bad idea. I'd also read enough of it to know that, if I was dumb enough to go out after him, we'd both end up hanging from a fishhook in some psycho's underground root cellar.

  No fucking thank you.

  Instead, I watched nervously from the kitchen window as Tris ran around checking the corpses necks for pulses or signs of life. By the time he was finished, there were six of them all lined up in a row.

  He jogged back and opened the door. "They're alive. I think you need to see this."

  I shook my head adamantly. "Nope. No thank you. Blonde haired white girl will not be the first to go due to stupidity. Not this time."

  "Babe, what are you talking about?" he asked in exasperation.

  "I've read a lot of books," I told him confidently. "And this is something straight out of a horror novel. If I step foot outside that door, I'm going to take a sickle to the chest or some shit."

  "Hades, Gem, you need to not read shit like that anymore."

  "I don't," I assured him. "I much prefer steamy romance to pissing myself."

  He took my hand and tugged me toward the door. "Well, good. Now come look at these people. They look really familiar to me."

  My eyes went wide, and I dug my heels into the floor. "Wait. How familiar?"

  There were six bodies lying on the beach, and six harem ladies back home. Had the Storm King killed the queens and sent them as a message to me? A warning that I was going to be next? Oh fuck, I wished I'd never read those scary books as a teenager.

  "Like, Blackwood princes familiar," he stressed. "And a princess."

  I gasped.

  Alexis? My very best friend in the whole wide world had miraculously washed up on the shore outside my illegal immigrant residence? That didn't seem strangely coincidental or anything.

  Ah, fuck it.

  Horror novels be damned, I rushed right out the door and down to the beach.

  Dawn was just breaking over the oceanic horizon, lending a gentle bronze glow to the bodies so they didn't look quite so lifeless and creepy. Sure enough, Tris was right. Those were most definitely the bodies of the princes and Lex. But what had happened to them? And how had they ended up here of all places?

  "There's another one over there!" Tris called, drawing my gaze further down the shore.

  I jogged over to him and studied the face in the sand. He looked slightly familiar, maybe… But I definitely didn't remember ever meeting him.

  "I don't know this guy," I admitted to Tris. "Do you?"

  He shook his head. "Nope."

  I gasped once more. "Oh my gods! What if he's their would-be murderer? What if his evil plan was foiled at the last second and he was injured along with them?"

  Tris's eyes went wide, but this time he didn't tell me to stop reading horror novels. "Get some rope then. We'll tie him up just in case."

  I nodded. "Good idea. When Alexis wakes up, we'll find out who he really is."

  I ran to the dock and grabbed some extra rope from one of the poles. When we finished tying the would-be murderer up, we dragged him through the sand and up to the side of the house where we hid him in the dunes.

  Tris glanced up at the sky, which had brightened significantly into a gentle shade of pink. "We better drag the rest of them up here too before any of the locals find them."

  "Another good idea," I complimented him. "You would have made an excellent detective in a novel, you know that?"

  He chuckled and shook his head. Thank the gods I'd found a man who understood and appreciated my particular brand of weirdness.

  By the time we dragged the last body up the beach, I was sweating like Zeus's nut sack.

  That's when they all started to stir.

  "Oh, come on!" I cried in frustration, a hand on my hip. "You couldn't have done that before we dragged your dumb asses up the beach?"

  Lex's eyes popped open immediately, and she sat up so quickly they spun around in circles. "Gemma? Oh fuck, we died. We're in Elysium."

  I threw my head back and laughed. "You're not dead, you royal asshat. You just washed up on my beach. Care to tell me how that happened?"

  She stared at me like I had two heads. "But you're dead, and Rob's the only one who can see and speak to spirits, so..."

  Clearly it wasn't adding up for her.

  "Lex, I'm not dead. Tristan and I faked our deaths to escape the Storm King."

  "You what?" she screeched, pushing up onto her feet. "All this time I've been mourning you, and you were alive?"

  She looked angry at first; then she tackle-hugged me into the sand, sobbing uncontrollably.

  "Oh my gods, Gem, I'm so happy you're alive."

  I patted her back. "I'm happy, too, Le—"

  But she cut me off. "I missed you so much."

  "Yeah, me t—"

  "I hate myself for bringing you to the palace with me."

  I sighed and rolled my eyes. "Lex, it’s oka—"

  "I've blamed myself every day for your death."

  I scoffed. "Now that's a little—"

  "I swore I'd avenge you. I swore I'd kill the king."

  Just as I was about to tell her to shut the fuck up, her last words entered my brain and messed up my train of thought. "And did you?"

  She sniffled. "Did what?"

  "Did you kill him?"

  She shook her head. "Not yet. But we're getting closer."

  "Oh!" I suddenly remembered the would-be murderer tied up in the dunes. "Speaking of killers and all that fun shit, I have a guy I need you to see."

  Lex's brows furrowed, but she carefully followed me over to the side of the house.

  I jabbed a finger at the sleeping criminal with a proud smile. "Does this bastard look familiar to you?"

  She gasped and dropped down onto her knees. "Oh my gods, Gem, what happened to him?"

  "We tied him up," I said smugly. "So he couldn't get to you guys and hurt you again."

  "Hurt us?" She looked astounded. "Gemma, this is Asher Storm. Ashlynn's son."

  My mind screeched to a halt. "Wait. Ashlynn's long-lost son? The one she told me about that night in the woods?"

  Ash groaned then and cracked open a single eyelid. "What the fuck?"

  Oh, shit. Now it was all coming together. Why he looked so familiar even though I'd never met him. He looked just like his m
om. Shame I didn't see it sooner.

  "Why the hell am I all tied up?" he asked in confusion.

  "Shit," I cursed again as I quickly unraveled his bindings. "I'm so sorry. I thought you were the reason Alexis and the guys were half dead and washed ashore."

  "No, the hydra is the reason for that," Lex explained. "Ash is the reason we're even remotely alive right now. He shifted into a hydra and fought the other one off."

  I blinked. "Holy shit, that's badass."

  "Right?" she asked with pride on his behalf.

  I could tell she loved the guy already. But there was something else about him that seemed familiar to me. Something beyond the fact that he resembled his mother. I just couldn't quite put my finger on it.

  "Have we met before?" I asked him, even though I was pretty sure that we hadn't.

  He grinned. "Not exactly. I tried to stay away from Alexis when she was hanging out with you. She didn't really have many friends besides us."

  Ding, ding, ding. That rang a bell.

  "Oh my gods, you're Adam!" I shouted, pulling him into a hug. "The motherfucking Adam! The one Alexis was in love with. The one that broke her heart and left her to wallow in tears and sadness for the rest of her days."

  Wait a second. Why was I hugging him again?

  I threw him off me and shook my head. "You should be ashamed of yourself."

  Alexis laughed and laughed. "Gemma! He didn't leave me and break my heart. He turned into a sloth to avoid being spotted by the Storm King or any of his guards, and then I found him and made him my pet before he had a chance to turn back into a man."

  No. Fucking. Way.

  "You're Speedy too?" I asked, flabbergasted.

  This shit was beyond fucking weird.

  My brows scrunched together nervously. "You're not going to tell me you're actually my dad too, are you? Or Alexis's long-lost father? I couldn't handle that."

  He laughed and shot Lex a funny look. "What's up with this girl?"

  Lex latched onto me and squeezed. "She's quirky like me."

  "Ah," Asher-Adam-Speedy said as he stood and dusted the sand off his pants. "Makes sense then."

  "Wait," I said, because apparently, I wasn't done being stupid just yet. "I thought the Storm King killed you? Like, twice." Once as a man many years ago, and then as sloth just a couple months ago.