Immortal Sea

by Virginia Kantra

  She shuddered and lowered the extinguisher.

  The fire erupted in a geyser of flame.

  Holy shit. Smoke boiled, swirling with all the colors of a bruise, yellow, black, purple.

  Get out, she thought.

  Get help.

  Nothing she could save was worth her life. Zack and Em needed her. She couldn’t afford to die.

  Tigger yowled, a long, unearthly cry of feline despair. She couldn’t leave the kitten behind either.

  She threw down the canister and reached under the table, cutting her palm on the broken mug. Tigger backed away.

  “Damn it, cat.”

  She scooped him up, ignoring the dig of kitten claws and teeth, and dashed for the back door. Smoke coiled and slithered around the ceilings, flowed down the walls. Her sweaty palms twisted the doorknob. It stuck. With the kitten dangling in the crook of her elbow, she yanked, tugged, rattled the door in the frame.

  It didn’t budge.

  The cat’s cries pierced her eardrums. Coughing, she abandoned the door and stumbled toward the dining room. Her eyes stung with smoke. A chair loomed in her path. Pain cracked across her shins. She shoved it aside, lurched forward on her knees, still cradling the protesting Tigger against her stomach.

  A curtain of fire sprang up like a wall, blocking her escape. Heat blasted her, nearly singeing her hair. She cried out in terror. Which way? Forward or back? The door? Stuck. Or the fire?

  The back door burst open. The fire howled and flung itself at the draft.

  A cold, wet blast of air struck back.

  Morgan.

  Relief swept over her. He filled the doorway, black as a thundercloud, bringing the storm in with him. Rain drove into the room, slashing, silver. The air trembled with fog and fury as energies collided.

  Trembling, she stared as power flashed around him.

  “Gau!” he shouted. “I cast you out!”

  The fire roared, curled, retreated. In the door to the dining room, the curtain of flame tore like a veil, disappeared in a shower of diamond drops.

  A gust scattered the choking fumes.

  The fire on the stove muttered, spat, and died.

  Tigger cowered, mute, in her arms.

  Morgan stood in the dissipating smoke like a soldier on a battlefield. Liz could feel the energy pumping through his blood and pouring off his skin. His gold-rimmed eyes blazed.

  Striding across the kitchen floor, he hauled her to her feet and yanked her against his iron body. “Are you all right?”

  “I . . .” Her lungs weren’t working properly. Neither was her brain. “Fine,” she managed before his mouth crushed hers.

  His kiss was fierce and needy. Hot. His mouth claimed and conquered hers. She clung to him with one arm, her short nails digging into his muscled shoulder, battered by a storm of sensation, a tempest of relief and desire and need. She couldn’t get her breath or her balance. He swept away her control.

  She gave herself up to his kiss, grateful simply to touch, taste, be.

  The kitten squirmed and clawed between them.

  “Ouch.”

  With one hand, he plucked the kitten from between them and dropped it on the ground. He gripped her hips to pull her more firmly against him and then stopped, his mouth compressing in apparent displeasure.

  Her heartbeat thundered. Her head hazed with lust. “What?”

  He took her arm and turned it over, exposing the long, thin lines of red cat scratches against her pale skin, her bleeding palm. “You are hurt.”

  “It’s nothing. Thank God you showed up.” She pulled her arm back. “Why did you show up?”

  “You needed me,” he said, so simply her heart stuttered.

  He didn’t mean it the way it sounded, she told herself.

  “I did,” she said. “I’ve never been so glad to see anyone in my life, but . . .”

  The kitten edged closer to the door, quivering. Morgan snapped a word Liz didn’t recognize and Tigger ran back under the table.

  Liz regarded the open door, her mind working now, turning, churning. “How did you get in?”

  He raised his brows. “In the usual way.”

  “The door was locked. Not locked,” she corrected herself. “Jammed.”

  “No. Gau used your fears to hold you captive.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “It was an illusion,” Morgan explained. “Like the fire at the other door. Demons are masters of such deception.”

  Fire. Demons. In her house.

  She drew an unsteady breath. “I think,” she said carefully, “I need to sit down.”

  Before her knees gave out.

  He righted the overturned chair with one hand. She sat, the cat scratches throbbing on her arm. The broken tea mug rolled at her feet. Piles of chemical foam dripped from the stove. Rain puddled on the floor. The kitchen curtains were limp, damp, and dirty, and wet paper napkins had been blown around the room. The storm had been no illusion. But there were remarkably few signs of fire: a blackened towel, a scorched kettle, a smudge of soot on the wall. A breeze blew through the open door, clean and smelling of salt.

  She shivered. “You’re saying this wasn’t a regular fire.”

  “It was a fire,” Morgan said. “Fire is the demons’ element.”

  “I was making tea. It’s an old house. Maybe a gas leak . . .” He met her eyes, and her voice died. Okay, she didn’t believe the gas leak theory either.

  She picked up Tigger, stroking his vibrating little body for comfort.

  “The flames provided the medium,” Morgan said. “But Gau should not have been able to manifest so completely.”

  She felt ignorant. Helpless. “Who is Gau?”

  His eyes, black and gold and guarded, met hers. “An old acquaintance.”

  “A demon.”

  “Yes.”

  “An enemy?”

  “He has made himself so.”

  Fear sharpened her voice. “You know, you could stop with the ominous, cryptic statements. We’re talking about my life here. My children’s safety. I need to know what’s going on.”

  He inclined his head. “You are right. I am not used to confiding in another.” His smile showed the edge of his teeth. “I hunt alone.”

  She looked at his teeth and his eyes and was suddenly reminded of something she would prefer to forget. He was not human.

  Inside her something quivered and froze like a rabbit spying a hawk, a flutter of purely animal panic. For a moment the impossibility of what he was overcame even the improbability of what he was saying.

  She bit down on her lip—This was Morgan, she told herself firmly—and the fear passed. “Well, you’re not alone now. You’ve got Zack to think about.” And me, she thought. And Em. “If we’re in danger, I need to know.”

  Morgan hesitated. Debating what to tell her? Or deciding what to leave out? “I am the leader of the finfolk. If I ally with Hell, if my people side with the children of fire against the selkie and humankind, Gau has offered me rulership over the sea.”

  “So he’s angry because you said no.”

  He went still, that quality beyond stillness that reminded her again he was something more or other than human. “You sound very certain of my answer.”

  “No one who knows you could think you are a traitor.”

  His gaze rested on her, dark and unreadable. “Not everyone shares your confidence in my loyalties.”

  “You gave my daughter a kitten. You told me about our son.” You made love to me as if I mattered to you. “You saved my house and probably my life. That earns you a certain amount of trust.”

  “You give me too much credit. You were in danger because of me. I could hardly do otherwise.”

  He would see it that way, she thought. Whatever Morgan was, whatever he had done, he had his own spare, warrior’s code.

  She frowned. “I still don’t understand why Gau attacked me. Does he want revenge?”

  “He wants my support.”

  “Killi
ng me won’t accomplish that.”

  “Threatening you might. He sees you as a weakness to be exploited.”

  She held her breath. “And how do you see us?”

  “I have no weaknesses.”

  She struggled to hide her disappointment. “Then we have no value as hostages.”

  “Elizabeth.”

  She looked up and met his gaze. The look in his eyes was as warm, as fierce, as intimate as a kiss. Her blood began to pound.

  “Your value is something Gau cannot begin to comprehend. He will not touch you again.” Morgan’s words had the weight of a vow, quiet and intense. “I will not leave you unprotected.”

  For a moment, she let herself be reassured, as if he would save her, as if he could love her, as if he would be there for her through all the Bad Things that life threw at you, like adolescence and illness and demons and death.

  Except he was leaving.

  Absently, she stroked the kitten in her lap. She had always known he would leave.

  The only question was, how many pieces of her heart would he take with him?

  Zack stood just inside the doors of the community center gym. Testing the waters, haha.

  The odor of sweat competed with the smell of fresh coffee and stale popcorn drifting from the lobby. Moviegoers eddied and swirled around him. He recognized some of them from the store, summer people dressed from the L.L. Bean catalogue or the outlet in Freeport, islanders in faded jeans and ball caps. Kids squirmed on laps or ran around the wooden floor. Family groups settled into the rows of folding chairs that straggled from foul line to foul line.

  He spotted Emily, sitting near the front with a skinny, dark-haired kid her age. The friend from day camp, Zack guessed. At least one of them was making friends. The tall dude who was with them must be the kid’s dad. He couldn’t go sit with them. The generations appeared to mix more on the island than they did back home in Chapel Hill, but he was pretty sure such a move would brand him forever as untouchable. A loser.

  The big cop who’d picked him up for questioning was there with a really pregnant woman. Her face looked like something in a magazine, all lips and eyes. Her breasts and stomach stuck out about a mile. Zack didn’t know where to look at her or if he should look at all. He felt his face getting red and glanced away.

  There she was. Stephanie.

  His heart beat faster.

  She sat with a bunch of her friends on a pile of mats under an extra hoop at midcourt. She waggled her fingers when she saw him, but she didn’t get up or wave him over.

  Zack stood frozen. Uncertain.

  “The next move is up to you,” she’d said.

  That big asshole, Doug, sprawled beside her, leaning close to whisper in her ear. She laughed and punched him in the arm.

  Zack walked over. “Hey, Stephanie.”

  She glanced up, her smile lingering in her eyes. “Hi, Zack.”

  He nodded to Doug. Todd was there, too, and a couple of girls he hadn’t seen before.

  “Everybody, this is Zack. Zack, everybody.”

  “Hey.”

  “Hi.” One of the girls dimpled. “Cute accent.”

  “He’s from Alabama,” Stephanie said.

  “North Carolina.”

  “Redneck flatlander,” Doug said.

  “Yankee asshole,” Zack replied without heat.

  Introductions concluded, it was easy enough to fit into the space on Stephanie’s other side while they waited for the movie to begin.

  A woman who looked like somebody’s Italian grand-mother, with hard red nails and lips and black athletic shoes, got up in front of the screen to welcome everybody to the summer movie series on World’s End.

  “Who’s that?” Zack murmured to Stephanie.

  “The mayor. Antonia Barone.”

  The mayor announced the movies, Transformers II and something else. He was distracted by Stephanie, by how close she was and how good she smelled, like strawberry Jolly Ranchers.

  The back of his neck crawled. Warning.

  He looked at Doug, but the older boy had his hand draped on a girl’s thigh, Hailey or Bailey or something. He didn’t seem like a threat at the moment.

  Zack took a deep breath, willing his muscles to relax.

  The tall man sitting with Emily suddenly stood. Zack felt his own pulse accelerate as the man scanned the crowd. His gaze collided with Zack’s, and this time the sizzle of warning shot clear down his spine.

  Holy shit.

  “What’s the matter?” Stephanie asked.

  Zack shook his head. “Nothing.”

  He watched as the man crossed the gym to talk with the police chief. Emily and the other kid trailed behind him, their short legs trotting to keep up. Chief Hunter frowned and glanced at Zack, apparently asking a question. Zack’s throat tightened. He hadn’t done anything wrong. But his creeping feeling of unease grew.

  The mayor was still talking. “Fifteen-minute intermission,” Zack heard, and “selling cookies in the lobby to support community programs.”

  He turned to Stephanie, trying desperately to ignore whatever was going on at the front of the room. “You want a cookie?”

  “Give it up, dude,” Todd said. “She doesn’t put out for cookies.”

  “I might consider it.” Stephanie smiled up at Zack. “But not for anything less than chocolate chip.”

  Zack jerked to his feet. “I’ll see what they’ve got.”

  A piping treble pierced the hum of the crowd. “I don’t want to stay here.”

  Emily.

  Zack froze.

  “I want to go home.” His little sister’s wail rose to the rafters.

  “I’ve got to go,” Zack said.

  “But you just got here,” Stephanie objected.

  “I know. I’m sorry.” He gestured toward the front of the gym, where Emily stood dwarfed by two big men. Two strangers. “It’s my sister.”

  “The little black girl?” Hailey asked.

  Doug snorted. “You’d rather make out with your sister than Stephanie? Man, that’s sick.”

  Zack flushed, frustrated, furious. But he couldn’t ignore the edge of panic in Emily’s voice.

  “I’m sorry,” he repeated, and went to his sister’s rescue, a loser after all.

  “You need to stay here,” the tall man was saying as Zack approached. “Half the island is here. Along with your wife.”

  “Don’t tell me how to do my job,” the police chief said. “You can’t walk into an unknown situation without backup.”

  “I have no choice.”

  “Where’s Morgan?”

  “I wish to God I knew.”

  “Zack!” Emily ran and clung to him.

  He put a hand on his little sister’s shoulder, speaking over her head to the tall guy. “Morgan’s staying at the inn. Maybe you could find him there.”

  The man appraised him. “You’re his son.”

  “Yes, sir. What’s going on?”

  “I was going to watch the movie with Nick,” Emily said. “But now Nick’s dad is leaving, and he wants me to stay here, and I don’t know the lady who’s watching us.” Her lower lip trembled dangerously. “And I want to go home.”

  “I can take her home,” Zack said.

  The police chief rubbed his jaw. “It would be better if you both stayed put for now.”

  “Why?” A sick ball formed in his gut. “Is it our mom? Is she okay?”

  “I’m sure she’s fine,” Chief Hunter said.

  “I’m leaving,” the other man announced. “I need to find the breach in the wards.”

  The cop nodded. “Maggie will watch the kids.”

  Em’s grip tightened on Zack’s leg. “Zack?” Her voice rose.

  Zack looked from his sister to the two adults, both alert, calm, grim. In charge. Next to them, he felt young and awkward. He didn’t have a clue what was going on. But he couldn’t stand here and do nothing.

  “I can watch them,” he said. “Em and . . .” Her friend. He
didn’t know the kid’s name.

  Chief Hunter looked at him sharply. Zack wondered if he would object.

  Like lifting lobsters disqualified Zack as a baby-sitter.

  He thrust out his jaw. “Emily’s my sister. I’m responsible for her.”

  “I can help,” somebody said behind him.

  Zack turned. “Stephanie.”

  She cocked a hip, hooking her fingers into her back pockets. “I’ve baby-sat for Nick plenty of times. They can watch the movie with us.” She smiled, making her silver lip ring gleam. “If that’s all right with you.”

  “That would be . . .” Emotion clogged Zack’s throat.

  “Fine,” the police chief said.

  “Great.” Zack cleared his throat. “That would be great.”

  Liz thrust the wet, wadded-up napkins into the garbage and grabbed the cleaning bucket from under the sink. Her hands shook. It was getting harder and harder to pretend even to herself that everything was going to be all right.

  Dumping the bucket under the faucet, she twisted the tap. As long as she was mopping up puddles, she might as well scrub her floor. Keep busy. Keep the fear at bay.

  What if Zack had been home when the fire struck? Or Em?

  Panic glazed her mind. She struggled to focus, drawing up a mental list of Things She Could Control, clean the floor, check on the cat, buy a new fire extinguisher.

  Not that the old one had done her any good.

  She drew a ragged breath, standing next to the sink, waiting for the bucket to fill, waiting for her life and her heartbeat to return to normal, and saw Morgan pull the scorched remnants of the dish towel out of the trash.

  She shuddered. She never wanted to see that thing again. “What are you doing?”

  “Gau must have had a way in,” Morgan said, spreading the wet and blackened towel on her kitchen table. “I am trying to find it.”

  He was doing something. Maybe she could help.

  “Try the stove,” she suggested.

  A long shadow fell across the doorway. Her heart raced as she braced to face this new threat.