by N. R. Larry
“Hurry,” Conway said. “She shouldn’t be separated from her soul for too long.”
With a curt nod, I narrowed my eyes at the golden ball of light. It pulsed with energy. My body trembled with it. Sweat broke out along my hairline. My focus began to slip, so I chanted to tunnel my thoughts around what I needed to do.
“Dottie,” I muttered, and then continued to chant an ancient, splicing ritual. Slowly, the golden orb began to whirl. Sparks shot outward, bouncing off the side of the container, before fusing back together. An emerald energy flashed in the middle of Sophie’s soul. My heart pounded faster. I could feel its wrongness; how out of place it was. “Dottie,” I hissed, focusing every pulse of magic in my body on that flash of green. “I have need of a word with you.”
Clenching my teeth, I ripped away the intruder inside of Sophie’s soul. Lighting tore through the sky. The house rumbled. Raising my left hand, I summoned Dottie into my palm, and handed the container with Sophie’s soul back to Conway.
Without hesitation, he removed her soul from between the two discs, stabilized it between his hands, and then lowered it down so that it hovered over her body. I turned my attention away from Dottie and focused on Conway’s work. At first, the soul didn’t move. I held my breath.
Then, Sophie jerked. Conway waved his hand in the air, and her soul funneled back in through her eye sockets. She shot up in bed and sucked in a sharp breath. The whiteness in her eyes flashed, and were replaced by their normal, earthy brown.
My shoulders eased, and I breathed easier. There were a few beats of relieved silence. Turning to the green mass of energy, I forced it to take the form of something more tangible. Something I could hurt if necessary. Slowly, the energy took on features. A mouth. A nose. Two holes where eyes should be. A ghostly mouth curled up into a smirk.
“Dottie.” With a clap, I called back the circle of protection that still coated the room. “I have a few questions for you.”
11
Jett
My eyelids fluttered, and some thick liquid flooded into my eyes. A low hum was still buzzing in my ears. I tried to move my arm to clear whatever was blocking my vision, but my arms felt heavy. Rolling over, I realized I was still on the floor. And, I was tangled in something. I gritted my teeth.
Fucking Lowe. I really wish he would stick to books. Of course, I should have learned to stop blindly following him into situations when it went against my gut. I had been doing it for years, because Lowe was my brother, and had more brains than anyone, but having brains didn’t mean you couldn’t do stupid shit.
I blinked a few more times, trying to clear what I slowly realized was blood out of my eyes. Whoever this cat was, he opened an old wound above my eye from my arena days. There was still a slash through my eyebrow from the prong of a trident. The hair had never grown back. I couldn’t believe a human opened that wound again.
White sparked across my vison from whatever light weapon he had used on us. I tried to move again and managed to gather a rough material between my fingers. Something rough bit into my fingers and a current of electricity shot into me. I let go and blinked a few times. It was a net. The fucker had caught me in a net after knocking me to the ground with his silly stick cannon.
Yeah, he was going to pay for that.
I rolled onto my stomach and my vision started to clear. Slowly, sound returned, even though they still pounded painfully from the noise bomb Orson hit us with. There was a thud from somewhere above me, followed by a low groan.
I swiped the blood from my face and peered up. Orson’s back was to me, and he was slamming Lowe into a wall covered with what looked like maps, Atlantean symbols, and grainy images of things I couldn’t make out. Who the hell was this mammal?
A low whir buzzed from my cuff, sending a spike of energy through me. Seconds later, my vison cleared. I could make out the features of Lowe’s face. Orson was muttering something I couldn’t make out, but all his focus was on my brainy brother. I smiled, because, as surface people liked to say, it was about to go down.
The net around me crackled, sending that painful electricity through my body again. Some kind of magic was running through the damn thing. Atlantean. Not that it would stop me. Lowe could figure out how a human got their hands on magic after I saved his ass. I was about to rip the netting away from my body when I caught Lowe’s eyebrows lift slightly. His gaze darted toward me, and he raised a hand behind Orson’s back. Then, he shook his head at me, ever so slightly, as if telling me to stop.
Either that or I’d hit my head too hard.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Lowe said, and I could barely make out his words. Reaching up, I cleared some blood and other gunk out of my ears. They were still pounding, but my hearing sharpened enough for me to make out Orson’s heavy breathing, and the rapid pulse of Lowe’s heart.
Even though this heart rate was faster than usual, I didn’t smell any fear. Which meant he wasn’t in any real trouble. Then why hadn’t he busted away from Orson? I shuffled a few inches to the left. The human still had his little cannon pointed at Lowe’s neck, but so what? My wound from that ancient weapon had already cleared.
“You know exactly what I’m talking about,” Orson hissed. “If you don’t give me what I need, I’ll blow your head off.” He pushed the end of the cannon deeper into Lowe’s neck. “Is that what you want?”
Lowe pushed against him, and Orson shoved back, slamming him into the wall again. I frowned. That shouldn’t be possible. He was wearing the new tech, same as me. No way should a human be able to get him in that kind of hold. He was either faking or some other weird shit was going on.
“Listen to me, man.” Lowe stood on his toes, trying to loosen Orson’s hold on him. “I came to talk to you about the things you posted online. You have some interesting theories about the drowning victims.”
Orson leaned in closer to him. “Not. Theories. Facts.” With a tense laugh, he let Lowe go and backed up, aiming his cannon at his chest. Lowe raised his hands in the air. “These idiots look to the skies for invaders. They think people will come from outer space in flying spaceships.” He scoffed. “All along, they should have been looking to the seas. The real threat comes out of the water, not the sky.”
“You got that right,” I said.
His gaze darted to me. “Well, well, well. Look who’s awake.”
There was an eyepatch I hadn’t noticed earlier resting over his left eye, and he was dark, like Sophie, except for his right eye, which was violet. I’d never seen a human with that shade of eyes before. Not that I had been around that many.
I looked over at Lowe, who hadn’t moved, despite Orson’s focus being mostly on me. “That’s a cute eye patch,” I said with a smile. “Are you a pirate?” Tilting my head, I added, “Where’s your hook?”
He matched my smile, and I expected him to flash yellow teeth, what with the state of his house, and the fact that he smelled like month-old beached whale. “My hook is in you, princess. And you’re the biggest fish I’ve ever caught.” Slowly, he aimed that cute little exploding stick weapon at me.
I laughed. “Well, you’re going to need a bigger boat.” With that, I ripped the netting away from myself. I cringed at the painful shock, but still managed to lunge onto my feet. I grabbed the cannon, broke it over my knee, and then grabbed Orson by the collar of his camo t-shirt. “That’s a Jaws reference.”
My muscles twitched, and my gums began to burn. Signs that the other me wanted out. The literal sea monster. I gritted my teeth to keep my extra row of razor sharp teeth from extending and pulled the mammal closer to me.
His expression was blank. I tilted my head, trying to figure out why he wasn’t afraid when Lowe came over and clapped a hand on my shoulder. “Let him go, big guy.”
Without looking at him. “He attacked first. An invitation. I’m simply accepting.”
“This shouldn’t be possible.” Orson narrowed his eye. “How are you still so strong, even out of the
water?”
“Jett.” Lowe tugged at me, until finally, I let him go. He nodded at me, and then set his gaze on Orson. Trudging across the room, he tapped one of the Atlantean symbols on the wall. “Where did you see this symbol?”
Orson stopped glaring at me long enough to turn his attention to Lowe. “You know where I’ve seen that symbol. Can we please cut the bullshit, did you bring the pearls or not?” His hand trembled, and he placed them inside his armpits to hide the tremor. That was when I noticed he was coated in sweat, and even though he was clearly fit, there was something off about him. He shivered like it wasn’t two thousand frickin’ degrees, and his movements were jerky and unnatural.
Ignoring him, Lowe tore something from the wall, and then held it up in front of Orson. I shifted closer to get a look. It was a picture of Sophie, kneeled over on the beach, right where the waves washed up on shore. “You know this woman?”
He snorted, and then swiped a hand through his hair. My gaze homed in on a tattoo on his forearm. It was Atlantean as well. Clearing my throat, I widened my gaze at Lowe, and then nodded my head toward the tattoo. Reaching out, Lowe grabbed him and held his arm up. “And where did you get this?” His eyes narrowed. “Half-blood. What does that mean to you?”
Orson snatched his arm away and backed up, waving his hands in the air like he was trying to swat us away. “I want those pearls!” He reached into the pocket of his frayed shorts and pulled out a small pearl with markings on it too small to make out. “This is the last one. You said you’d bring more. That was the deal.”
I took one step toward him. “What the hell, man?”
He turned to me and lifted an eyebrow. Then, his expression changed from desperation to something else. Something like realization. “He didn’t send you,” he whispered.
I was about to ask him what the hell he was on about, when he dug his thumbnail into the pearl. A white, foamy substance bubbled out, and he lowered his face, and sucked it in through his nose and mouth.
His head snapped up, and an orange light flashed in his eyes. “And if he didn’t send you, then you’re one of the invaders.” With that, he clapped his hands, and foam oozed between his fingers.
My mouth gaped open. Confused as hell, all I could do was stare as the foam dripped onto the floor and slithered toward me like a water moccasin. It wrapped around my ankles, bubbled up my legs, and began to harden. I lifted my hands in the air. “What in Poseidon’s name?” I glanced over at Lowe. The same thing was happening to him. Only, he was encased all the way to his neck.
Finally, my brain shot into action, and I thrashed around, trying to free myself. It was no use. Whatever it was, I was trapped, and at the mercy of a human that was clearly out of his fucking mind.
12
Zarya
Conway put Sophie into a deep sleep so that her soul could reconnect with her mind and body. I closed the fragments of the ghost I’d pulled out of her into my magical container, and then made my way to the kitchen, my trunk floating on a wave of water behind me. Approaching the counter, I waved my hand in front of me, flicked my fingers, and removed everything from the trunk. It all lined up neatly on the marble surface. I sat on a stool and sat the container in front of me.
A throat cleared at my back. I jumped. Strained from the ritual, and eager to move onto the next stage, I was a little on edge. “You always move so silently,” I said, waiting for my heart rate to return to normal.
“Yes,” Conway said, stepping past me and leaning back against the cabinets. “I suppose I’ve always had to.” He nodded toward the various bottles, boxes, and pouches in front of me. “You’re not finished?”
Narrowing my eyes, I leaned closer to study what Violetta managed to snag from my pantry back home. It wasn’t much, mostly basics, but that simply meant I would have to be creative. “No.” I nodded toward the cupboard above his head. “Hand me a mixing bowl?”
The door squeaked open, and then he sat a silver bowl in front of me. I grabbed a vial of sea salt and shook some into it. Then, I added a few other ingredients: coral sugar, sea dew, and the most important, vampire squid venom. There was a puff, and then yellow smoke rolled out of the bowl, filling the kitchen with a heavy, volcanic scent.
Conway coughed, waving a hand in front of his face. “Harsh,” he rasped. “What are you doing?”
I stood up and started going through the cabinets, searching for something I use as a substitute for blue whale skin. “I’m making synthetic skin. For Dottie.” There was nothing in the cabinets, so I sauntered to the refrigerator and stuck my head inside.
“Skin?” he asked in a confused voice.
There was a roll of green sea weed in the bottom crisper. “That’ll work,” I muttered, snatching it and standing. “Yes,” I told him in a louder voice. “Seems like the polite thing to do, right?”
He didn’t smile, but the hardness that was always in his face softened. “I suppose so.”
I sat back down on the stool and slit the plastic open with a fingernail. “Pull up a chair and help me.” As I placed the wraps side by side on top of the counter, Conway pulled up a chair behind me, and leaned forward. The strands of his pale hair brushed my bare shoulder. I shivered and turned my head enough that I could make out his profile.
“What do you want me to do?” His voice was husky, warming me from my core to the tips of my toes.
A dozen lewd thoughts crawled through my head. With Conway, it was still new. I barely knew the feel of his touch. I didn’t know if he moaned, or if he hid the evidence of his pleasure locked away in a clenched jaw or fist. Merely thinking about everything there was to discover hardened my nipples. The focus I needed scattered between what I needed to do and daydreams.
“Zarya?” he asked in a breathy voice when I failed to answer.
Clearing my throat, I shook my head and sucked in a deep breath. “I want you to help me conjure.”
“Conjure?” he asked, leaning closer to me, resting a hand on my hip. His touch contrasted with Jett’s and even Lowe’s, they both had a rough touch from years of handling tools and weapons. If it weren’t for the pressure he applied to my flesh, his touch would have been feminine.
“Conjuring,” I began, shifting into his touch. His fingers dug deeper, and my eyelids fluttered closed. “It’s the seeing part of magic.” Leaning back until I was leaned against his chest, I added, “People argue that it’s the most important, because the seeing is what becomes the end result.”
He inched forward and swept my hair off my shoulder, tracing a single finger down the middle of my back. I clenched up to keep from trembling. “And—” He planted a kiss so light on my cheek that I barely felt it. Need burned through me, and for a moment, I forgot what I was in the kitchen to do. “How do I help you conjure?”
I bit into my lower lip and slowly spread my legs. Taking the seaweed wraps, I crushed them in my hands and added the scraps to the bowl. They sank past the smoke and settled on top of the sea salt and sugar. I placed the bowl between my legs and said, “Give me your hands.”
Conway gripped me at the waist and crushed me against him. I gasped at the urgency in his movement. He grabbed me like I was his. The electricity darting between us made me dizzy. It made me high. Slowly, he ran his hands down the sides of my arms. My eyelids fluttered closed, my mouth parted. As his palms crawled across my skin, my body throbbed. I curled my toes and then pressed them into the cool floor. It felt like forever before his fingers laced around my wrists. He breathed against my ear, and then rested his palms on top of my hands.
“And now?” he whispered.
I gritted my teeth and forced my thoughts away from desire. My focus tunneled on the magic I needed to create, and I let the energy throbbing at my core fuel the ritual. “See her,” I said, slow and deliberate. “See her alive, as flesh and bone, and then—” I began to mix all the ingredients together. Our hands moved as though we were one person. “Know that she is real.”
“Know she is real,”
he repeated. There was the feel of something more in his voice. That something brushed against the back of my neck, shot down my arms, and pulsed at my fingertips.
The mixture bubbled and smoked. On the counter, the magical container bounced toward the edge and rattled. A green light flashed off and on. I massaged the mixture, and Conway moved with me. We rocked together, working the substance until it became a thick, white paste. In my mind, I could see skin forming, wrapping around the green energy that was what remained of Dottie.
Ancient words floated off my tongue almost automatically. The top of the container shot off. Together, Conway and I rocked faster. The paste quivered, and then formed a cone, crawling up the side of the bowl, touching the edge of the light, and drawing back.
The two pieces of magic were testing each other. Trying to see how they would fit together. I narrowed my eyes and stopped kneading the paste. Teal energy sparked from the tips of my fingers, and then shot into the blob. Again, the paste inched toward Dottie—
A bright light slashed into my vison. I jerked back, almost knocking the bowl onto the floor. An explosion of sound ripped a scream out of my throat. I slammed my hands over my ears and jumped to my feet.
Conway cupped my face. I squinted at him. His features blurred in and out of focus. Even though his lips moved, I couldn’t make out what he was saying. I pulled my hands away from my ears. They were covered in blood. The cuffs on my wrists beeped, flashed turquoise, and then clamped tighter around me.
The stark white stealing my vision rippled, and the room split apart, an image hoovered in the middle of the space between the real world, and the psychic vision forcing itself into my thoughts.