by Chris Howard
He looked up. He heard a girl in a flowery swimsuit halfway down the beach threatening her brother. The birds shrieked and squealed and cried sorrow on the wind, flutter and feather ripple of seagulls wheeling above him. He could hear every fibrous creak of wing tension, a stiff struggle against the battering gusts off the Atlantic.
Still on his hands and knees, mouth open to pull in air, he twisted to look over his shoulder.
He could hear the sea calling him. In English. Come to me, Alex. Then a tug in his body behind his naval, and he fell forward, curling up, pushing his hands over his ears to shut out her voice.
"No!" The word was a strangled gasp, and he squeezed his eyes shut.
"Second time you've left your board somewhere, and then I have to track you down to return it to you, Alex Shoaler."
Alex opened his eyes, trying to focus on someone standing over him, a human shape in a bright pink shirt against a blinding solid whitewash of clouds. A woman's voice. He couldn't see her face, just her dark hair in three braids swinging in the sea wind. He threw one hand up defensively and kicked backward over the sand.
"Get away from me."
She flipped his surf board in the air, caught it with one hand, let out an annoyed breath. "Come on. You used to know me. It's Kassandra. I returned your skateboard when I was in the ninth grade. I live in the house at the end of Atlantic ave." He stopped, fingers clawing at the sand, but he didn't answer. "Your friends are fine. Jadey, Rude, Seph, they're fine. I healed them. You're seaborn, Alex. And I know of the Kirkêlatides. She's not after you. She's after me."
He shook his head. "She's after her father's murderer. Someone named Gregor."
Kassandra sighed, crouched in the sand beside him, laying the surfboard behind her. Then she sat, crossed her legs and leaned her chin on her fist. "Bold bitch. Now, I'm going to have to kill her."
Alex blinked, trying to focus on Kassandra. He was breathing hard, his heart thudding recklessly in his chest, doubling when she unfolded her legs and climbed over him, one hand on his waist, her fingers digging into his wetsuit, a gentle pressure on his hipbone.
"Close them," she whispered, and ran a finger over his eyes. "That's better."
At her words, his whole body relaxed, and the pain of his friends and the fear of the sea in his lungs slipped under a loud rushing water noise, a dream-buzz that filled his mind. The world seemed to slow, every sharp sorrow draped in her softening presence like the waves wearing away the sand.
He blinked at her, trying to fit pieces of her together, trying to care about what had happened to his friends in the last ten minutes.
She helped him out. "Yeah, Alex, you can breathe underwater. Cool isn't it? I know your mother, Elizabeth, and she isn't seaborn, so your father must be."
He stared back, nodding. She was the one who caused the water noise in his head, absorbed his pain, took on every burden in his soul, dark edged story lines of the tapestry blurring into patterns without meaning.
Because she was there, he simply did not care anymore.
Kassandra sat back, crossing her legs again, and then leaned back on her hands, fingers curling around Alex's surfboard.
"I know you," he said after twenty seconds of study. "I do remember. Five or six years ago. My skateboard."
She stared calmly back at him, raising her eyebrows when he admitted it. "Told you." She gave him a softer smile and shrugged. "I had such a crush on you then. Used to watch you at the beach. Seaborn...it figures...you always did look good in the water." She sighed over an old memory. "But you were madly in love with that hacker girl. You didn't even notice me." Kassandra could see him flipping the word "then" around in his thoughts. "You're flattered?"
"Still madly in love with Kaffia. But you're one of the witches, so, yeah, I'm flattered."
"So, where are you now?"
He started to scowl, not sure what she meant, and annoyed at the way she didn't meet his eyes, but kept moving her gaze, focusing on the middle of his forehead or somewhere just over his shoulder. She had cleared his sight, did something with her fingers to make him see, but hadn't yet looked right at him.
"Um...MIT." He thought that was the answer she was looking for, and then added his major, "Robotics. Autonomous biomechanics."
"And Kaffia Lang?"
"Princeton. Doing you know what—probably teaching them more than the other way around. She'll be here tomorrow night. I'm driving down to pick her up at South Station, and then she's home for the rest of the summer. I can't wait to see her, miss her so much." Why was he telling her all of this? "Sorry, I can't shut up about her."
Kassandra's gaze shifted to the Atlantic, and suddenly she looked fragile and about to cry. "No problem. It's that madly in love thing, I'm sure." She sounded lost. "My love died in battle. Over one and a third billion cubic kilometers of ocean out there and I can still taste his blood in the water."
"What..." He cleared his throat, uncomfortable with her pain standing out sharper than her bright pink t-shirt. "What about you? You're still here?"
She gathered some inner strength and smiled, jutting her chin at his wetsuit. "Surf New Hampshire. I notice you haven't moved very far. What, do you drive to Cambridge every day?"
He grinned, nodding at her, certain that she would understand what he was about to say. "You know how it is. Grew up here. I couldn't leave this, even if I wanted to." He motioned to the Atlantic Ocean. "I need to feel the water on my skin. I love the sea more than anything on earth."
That seemed to please her. Smiling sadly, she leaned forward to doodle three interlocking hearts in the sand, poking her finger in the water pooling in the center. "Good to know."
She pushed herself forward, onto her knees and crawled closer to him. She reached out her hand, and using the same wet finger, drew something on his forehead. Then he knew why she had not looked directly into his eyes before, because she was looking into his eyes now, right into him, as deep as she wanted to go, and he couldn't move, couldn't ask her to stop. Cold black abyss of the Atlantic rising around them, and she showed him how she had helped Seph and Jadey and Rude, regenerating fingers, bones unwinding, setting, skin sealing without scars. She shuffled through his memories, playing his experiences back, studying the sequences he shared with the Kirkêlatides woman. Nikasia, daughter of Theoxena.
She took in Nikasia's mannerisms, the flow of her fingers, the words in her songs, stopped the motion to look at her face, her unusual eyes, the clothes she wore, and then flipped back to repeat the sequence, or skipped forward. Nikasia kneeled on top of him, a cruel smile. Telkhines blood. I taste it on you, Alexander Shoaler, strong and sweet, lord's blood. How is it that you live while the Alkimides have the throne? Is your father alive, Alexandros?
Kassandra gasped, "It can't be." She shoved him roughly to the sand, breaking her hold on him.
He got up on his elbows, scowling at her. "What?"
Kassandra stood, shivering, folded her arms, and turned to the Atlantic, scanning the horizon. "This changes a few things. What do you say to this, Eupheron?"
"Who are you talking to? What's Telkhines blood?" Alex climbed to his feet, brushing off the sand.
"Means we can gather the assembly for a full vote." She laughed in response to someone only she could hear, but it was distant and even a little cruel.
"Kassandra?"
She didn't seem to hear Alex. "One thing to come after me. Another to go after my father. And now Alexandro, who's been here the whole time, right under my nose."
Kassandra held out one hand, and a glob of water flew from the ocean, wobbling and turning in the air, landing with a slap across her palm. She cupped it in both hands, squeezing it, rolling it up her fingers like clay, bending it into a thin loop of ice. Then she turned, stepped right up to Alex, and placed it on his head.
He felt the ring for a moment and then it melted away. He ran his fingers through his hair. Nothing there.
"Something to protect you from her."
He sou
nded doubtful. "There's nothing."
"Sure there is. I can see it. Others cannot."
"You..." He looked at her hair, braided with thin rings of gold and sharp slivers of mother of pearl. She looked...as she had always looked at school, wild, not from this world. He avoided her eyes. "Everyone called you and your sisters witches. You and Jillian and Nicole. Three witches, three sisters, but you don't really look alike. I never thought you were..." He stopped, cleared his throat. "Don't tell me you are a witch?"
She smiled, but it was serious. "I can be." She grabbed his arm, squeezing as she looked into his eyes, climbed into his soul, and her voice touched him on the inside, Call my name when you need me, and I will find you. I know, it sounds like a stupid song, but you will need my help because she knows what you are and she will return—or worse, her mother.
Kassandra let him go, and took one step back from him. She pulled her shirt tight by the hem, and brushed the sand off her shorts. Then she bowed to him.
Alex shook off a wave of confusion. "Hey...uh...Thank you." It was difficult to think with her weird formal behavior. "Really. For Rude and for Seph."
"And Jadey. The Kirkêlatides made her chew off her own fingers. It was after she shoved you under the water."
Alex's lips pulled tight at the thought of Jadey in pain. "Thank you."
Kassandra didn't speak for a few seconds, just stared at him with scarily focused intensity. "I am an Alkimides. I—my family, my House—owes you much more than that. So much that cannot be repaid."
He waited for her to explain, but she bowed again and walked away, into the surf, up to her knees, her waist.
He said her name in his thoughts, Kassandra?
She turned, inviting his question.
He shouted over the surf, "What are you?"
"Something you lovemore than anything on earth." He recognized his own words, and she smiled because she liked the stunned reaction on his face. "I am the Sea, Alex." She made a swirling gesture with one hand and she was wearing a crown as bright as the sun, a tall trident in her other hand. Another flourish of fingers and they vanished.
Kassandra chewed her lip, about to say something, and then shook her head and dove under the waves.
Alex stared after her a minute, but when he bent to pick up his surfboard he fell to his knees, sobbing uncontrollably. His eyes burned with tears. All of the cares held off by her presence flooded back into his head—but too strong, a thunderous roll of them, sharp core-driving pain like puncture wounds and poison, and feelings he felt only by their absence, brittle honeycomb spaces of sorrow and soul-blight and peeled back scabs over failed hope. And the fresh memory pain bled into the eternal. Seph can't breathe and she's breaking all the bones in Rude's arm, Jadey's mouthful of fingers and blood...and my father went to sea when I was three and never from loss will I be free.
Chapter 5 - Bachoris
They met on neutral ground, at a wobbly table up front by the windows, right in the open at the Starbucks on 42nd and 8th in Manhattan. Three of them, sipping hot drinks, coffee and sweet chai, glaring at anyone who dared to stare at them.
One spoke softly, in long fluid self-indulgent assessments of the situation, "She is whorish unfit mortal waste who does not know what she possesses or to whom it most deservedly must go."
"Yes, my lady Akastê."
One of the three, a girl who looked no older than ten, only spoke to agree with her lady, and the last, a slender young man with hunger hollowed cheeks and white blond hair hanging to his shoulders, only spoke in song titles.
"What Are You Afraid Of."
Akastê frowned and admitted, "That she is not mortal, or as young as she appears. I never dreamed that something like this could happen."
"I Was Never Young."
Akastê sipped her coffee, soft pressure of her lips on the china, the corners of her mouth sharpening as she listened in on the thoughts of other patrons. She turned at a blur of yellow taxi, dark windows sliding by; the cabby hit the brakes hard right in front of Starbucks, and a tall dark-haired man in a blue suit slid out of the back, waving to the man behind the wheel, still laughing over something they had shared on the ride.
The blue-suited man stepped through the doorway and everyone in line for coffee, everyone behind the counter turned to stare at him. He smiled, and although every single one of them knew that he could have walked up to the counter, edged out the woman who was about to ask for a croissant and coffee, and order anything he wanted—and he would have got it—the man made a slight bowing gesture, a respectful nod, and strode to the back of the line. He waited without a hint of impatience, a calm smile on his face, ignoring the four college girls in line ahead of him, tanned and summery, blond highlights and sandals slapping the tiled floor. They kept turning around and too obviously trying to make eye-contact with him.
He faced the front of the store, watching the odd threesome at the corner window table—watching them, not staring.
The four girls of summer turned up the volume and shifted their conversation to sexual ventures. One had "done it" inside a moving van—while it was moving. The others offered fire escapes, elevators, but nothing the man in the blue suit hadn't experienced at one time or another.
"He's not wearing a ring," whispered one, pushing at her chewing gum with her tongue and snapping it. She had N.Y.P.D. in blue and white across the ass of her shorts. She dropped her wallet and bent over, but seemed to have trouble picking it up.
While they ordered coffees and little plates of apple strudel, Police Woman thought she heard Mr. Blue Suit whisper to her, the words slipping into her ears faster than they could have been spoken. "Deck of a sailboat in a hurricane off Bermuda...with another immortal. Wind moaning in the rigging, salt in the air, on our skin, nothing like on it earth."
But when she turned, he was browsing the menu board, and then dropped his gaze, smiling at an aproned man behind the counter. "Tallest cup, darkest roast you have, please. Leave no room for cream. I do not care for it."
Ignoring the young women lingering in line with their cups and dishes and the smell of hot cinnamon and apple, the man in the blue suit paid with a twenty, stuffed the change into the tip jar, and made his way through the cluster of tables to the wobbly table up front by the windows.
He paused, holding his cup an inch off the wooden surface, examining the giant circular Starbucks logo across the glass. He'd seen it a million times, but today it took on a special meaning. "Mermaid with a crown. Nice place to meet, Akastê. Much better than the Reflecting Pool and the Washington Monument in the rain."
He pulled out a chair, sat down and took a sip.
The woman in the center nodded to him, her long dark hair rolling along her shoulders like storm waves. "Bachoris. You're late."
"My lady, you have pulled me away from a busy trading day, and then you ask me to take two months off to get to know some woman in New Hampshire. Take her, you say, bend her. She's difficult. She's seaborn, granddaughter of their king. What about her could possibly be worth two months of my time?"
"Heaven Beside You," said the slender man with long blond hair.
Bachoris stopped, set his cup of coffee down. "So, which one of you really is Akastê?"
All three of them turned to look at him. The little girl on his left lifted her head, her face white and shiny with sharp painted red lips like a doll. The slender man pulled his hair behind his ear with one finger, and the tall woman in the middle with hair like the ocean licked her lips, and then ran her tongue over her small white teeth. All three had the same eyes, blue sea-glass irises and pure whites, but when he looked at them, the colors bled into opaque silver.
"All of us."
Bachoris swallowed and reached for his cup. "Who is this seaborn woman?"
"Her name is Kassandra."
"Dangerous Type."
"And why am I spending my valuable time—two months—with her?"
"You are not spending them. It is two months I am giving you, Bachoris
. Kassandra must be forced to give up the Sea's crown to me."
That made him sit up and put his coffee down. He waited for more, grew impatient, and said, "So, I imagine you want me to take it from her."
"She's not simply going to hand it over."
"Not If You Were the Last Junkie on Earth ."
He let his gaze shift to 42nd Street and the race of yellow taxis.
The three that were Akastê waited for his response. The girl looked down into her chai as if reading something in the depths of her cup. Long blond hair examined a blank wall across the room. The dark haired woman folded her hands, rested her chin on them, and stared at Bachoris without blinking.
Like a fucking reptile.
Bachoris glanced at her and then back through the windows. At least her eyes had gone back to their original color. He didn't like the chrome eyes thing she did when she grew angry—and it was worse with the three of her working against him.
He closed his eyes, a shudder of pain running through his body, a jump in his perfect blue suit. He wiped the start of tears from his eyes, and bowed his head. "I will do it, my lady."
"Wonderful. Kill her? It will not be easy, even for you."
"No," he whispered, shaking his head. "Even worse. I will make her fall in love with me."
"Love is the New Feel Awful."
With that, the three who were Akastê pushed back their chairs, stood at the same time, and snaked through the tables in single file. Bachoris stood. All three waved a hand, gave Bachoris a slight bow, and he stepped onto the sidewalk ahead of them, already looking for a taxi.
"Where will we meet next? And when?"
Bachoris turned. "Anywhere but D.C. I hate Washington."
"Banned in D.C."
"You select the location, Bachoris. I will find you wherever you are. And when?"
Bachoris sighed and said, "When I am done—"
