Water Games (Watergirl Book 4)

by Juliann Whicker

  “My name isn’t Brian.” The curl of his mouth was all I could take.

  I swung my arm around and the ocean swept up, spinning around him and lifting him until he hovered above me. “I can’t trust you. I can’t trust myself. Take your mysteries and bury them with the ocean. I’m finished playing your game.”

  I sent him away. I closed my eyes and went with the current, wrapped around Spyguy and taking him far, far, away.

  I lay there alone on the rock crying for a long time.

  “Little sister,” Lucien said.

  I gasped and opened my eyes. My cheeks were wet. I wiped the tears away while I glared at him. “Why didn’t you tell me that Brian killed Sean’s aunt?”

  “He didn’t kill her.”

  I stared at him and felt sick. “He didn’t?”

  “No. I did. He’s not allowed to kill anyone. Took some kind of oath. It’s dangerous, but he always disarmed his opposition without lethal methods. I killed her because she was almost rescued by a disgusting band of Portermutts and Silkrots.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  He shrugged. “To be honest, you’re a little squeamish. Your fish is ruined.” He went to the string set-up and scraped the fish bits off before he strung up some more.

  I watched my half brother working with the fish like the whole island demolition wasn’t worth mentioning. One of his ear tips was ripped open. He had a swollen jaw and a smashed nose. That was just his face. I’d beaten him with the island and the ocean. I shrugged.

  “Why are you here, Lucien? Does my mother tell you to watch me, to kill me if it’s convenient?”

  He looked up, slightly startled. “She talks about you often. She’s worried. Not just about the world, about you. You’ve stirred the Deepness. Not everything down there likes Sirens. You have a lot of enemies. We won’t be able to come back here, not after that water show. Not that there’s much to come back to. It’s too bad. It was a good place.”

  “Why am I so strong? Sirens aren’t always that strong, are they? Like mother, she never lost control and had the ocean eat worlds, did she?”

  “Mother can kill people with her voice. Grandma can control people with her voice. You’ve got the whole Siren slew of gifts. You’re rare. Rarer than rare. Mythical.”

  He smiled and brought over fish, using his palm as a plate. I touched his swollen thumb for a second before I took the slivers of fish and ate them one at a time. I was starving.

  “Where is Spyguy?”

  “Brian. He’s gone.”

  “Brian? What did he do to deserve a normal name?”

  I shook my head and rubbed my bare foot over the rough stone. “You have a real name.”

  “Yeah, but you never particularly liked me.”

  I made a face at him. “I don’t know. I can’t trust him blindly anymore.”

  “Fair enough. You never trusted me. That makes it easier. How are you feeling?”

  I shrugged. I hurt everywhere inside and out. I needed to see Sean. Nothing else mattered.

  “I mean with your abilities to control the ocean because any time now, we’re probably going to be attacked by a whole slew of Siren catchers.”

  I stared at him. His smile beneath his broken nose looked crooked. “Siren catchers?”

  He nodded.

  “So, we should leave the rock?”

  He shrugged. “Someone will rescue us at some point. Most of my equipment as well as our ship was blown apart in your impressive deluge. We could swim to the nearest civilization and ask for a ship from there, but it’s mostly deserted by those who are now in Terramore.”

  “I could do like a little cyclone around the island that should keep most people away.”

  “That sounds like it could get out of control.”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. I kind of used a lot of energy on Spyguy. I’m not sure I can do much. I could shoot people with water bullets, but I’d rather not shed more blood today.”

  He nodded. “Right. Let’s see what I can pick up. Be quiet for a sec.” He walked to the water’s edge, closed his eyes and stopped breathing like he was listening intently. After a few minutes, he turned and knelt down beside me. “Ships are coming. Don’t mess with the ocean. Ships are kind of delicate.”

  I brushed his cheek, the one that wasn’t swollen. “And you aren’t?”

  He winked at me. “Not particularly, no, but my ear got messed up. I’m sad about that.”

  “We’ll fix it. I promise.”

  Soon after that the water whispered and I wasn’t sure I liked what it had to say. I definitely didn’t like what it was saying. I edged away from the ocean and almost fell into the bubbling massive well that used to be the center of the island.

  Lucien grabbed my arm, steadying me before he asked, “Where are they coming from?” He didn’t sound worried. Why didn’t he sound worried? An army was coming and it wanted my blood. The ocean was positive about that. It wanted my blood too.

  “Charming.”

  “What?” Lucien asked.

  I shook my head. “They’re coming mostly from that direction.” I pointed past him. “But they’re splitting up and coming around. We’ll be surrounded. Do you have any special skills? Now’s the time to pull them out.”

  He laughed and shook his head. “I have a lot of gifts, but at the moment I think holding hostages will be the way to go. We’re going to perch on that tiny ledge across the blow hole and I’m going to threaten to throw you in if anyone gets too close.”

  I stared at him. “Don’t they want to kill me? I’m pretty sure they do.”

  He frowned at me. “They might want you dead, but getting you out of that,” he said nodding at the whirling vortex of death, “Won’t be easy. You’ll be missing valuable body parts. Sirens go for a fortune.”

  I ran my hand through my hair. “That sounds like a horrible plan.” Spyguy would come up with something better. We’d already be off the island or he’d use a bat signal to get someone to pick us up or something. My stomach twisted thinking about him. I’d thrown him away because I trusted him and I couldn’t bear if that stupidity had hurt Sean. I looked at Lucien evenly. “Let’s do it. Even if you do toss me in, I can probably control the water enough to not die. Maybe.” Controlling water that I was in wasn’t the easiest thing.

  We walked carefully around the ring of rocks that were now cliff-like then climbed carefully down to the ledge wide enough for us to sit down on side-by-side.

  “This is nice,” he said, leaning back and tilting up his face like he was getting a suntan.

  “Super nice. Tell me a story.”

  “A story? What kind?”

  “Did mom ever tell you stories?”

  He nodded thoughtfully. “Sure. Once there was a world of dragons and Sirens…” The origin story was mostly like the one my dad told me about, the three tribes, water, land, air, and the Siren that united them all. Then there was War as the water kings decided they were better than anyone else and disappeared, claiming all the waters and threatening anyone who encroached. The Siren’s children were of the water so that didn’t work. War was their story, war between monsters and gill people, wars that lasted centuries.

  “What about the dragons?” I asked. “Are there really dragons? I kind of want to meet one. Also kind of don’t. My life is weird enough.”

  He nudged me with his elbow. “Too true. I wonder about that sometimes. Are they just people who like jumping out of airplanes? It would be really hard to hide wings.”

  I nodded. “Really hard. There’s something right there.”

  I almost pointed but Lucien pulled my hand down. “I know. Silkrot. They’re gross. Don’t look at it.”

  I got a look at the creature and then kind of wished I hadn’t. It was like a spider human with big pincer teeth coming out of its face. It had no trouble climbing around on the rocks, sending shoots of silk along its path around to us.

  “That’s new. Why do some monsters like me and some mon
sters not?”

  “I don’t know. Sirens are supposed to be mothers to all monsters, but some creatures didn’t get the memo. I personally think that they were genetically engineered by Vashni or Soremni scientists hundreds of years ago. They used to do crazy stuff like that. They’ve had a lot of ages of rising and falling civilizations.”

  “Huh. That’s a terrifying idea.”

  “I think you should shoot that one with water bullets before it gets right on top of us. If you shoot it in the abdomen it shouldn’t kill it.”

  I shot him a skeptical look, but there were more of the silkrots climbing around towards us. The idea of them all scaling down on our heads gave me the serious shivers.

  I made a scooping gesture, and water leapt into my arms. I rolled the ball of water in my hands then lifted it up and up and up and then shattered it apart going in every direction over our heads. It seemed like an explosion, but every target was precise, water bullet to the abdomen. The thing that happened was five of them tumbled into the seething water and were dragged out of sight. They’d be battered against the rocks for a long time. I sighed because I couldn’t do much about that.

  “Nice. Now they’ll stay out of sight as they come around.”

  I glanced at him. “That’s a good thing?”

  “Less creepy. Who wants to watch those things?”

  I giggled and leaned my head on his shoulder. “If we die here, I want you to know that I only disliked you because mom was so nice to you.”

  “Thanks. She did that intentionally. She doesn’t want you to trust me.”

  I straightened up and frowned at him. “Why?”

  He grinned and looked truly terrible with his swollen, colorful face. “Because she doesn’t want us to breed more monsters.”

  I stared at him. “You’re my brother.”

  “Half brother. Our genetics aren’t remotely similar to humans. Our children would all be phenomenally strange, but not from inbreeding.”

  “Good to know. Not good to know. Man, Lucien, can you please not have said that?”

  He laughed and patted my head. “I agree with her. You need to have beautiful babies with your husband. For someone with no Siren blood, he’s got a really good head.”

  “Head? What about heart?”

  “That too. He treats you like you’re his queen, the one he must protect and lay down his life for. Between him and the prince, you’re ideally situated to facilitate the change that this world needs. Who do you think did it?”

  “The poison?”

  He nodded. “It could have been any of us, except you, of course. Maybe you accidentally poisoned him with your cooking. I’d believe that.”

  I pushed him over and he almost went sideways into the white water swirling at our feet. “Sorry.” I grabbed his arm and held him carefully.

  “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t joke about your husband. Spyguy said he’d be okay. He knows what he’s talking about.”

  I nodded and felt a welling of horribleness that probably wouldn’t ever go away. I’d just tossed Spyguy out like he was garbage even though I had no proof of anything. Strips of his shirt were tied around the cut on my leg. At the same time, he was playing a game I didn’t understand, using me like a piece on a board.

  Suddenly, a stream of the spider monsters came over the edge above us. I reacted without thinking. The water exploded out of the blowhole sweeping us up with the spiders. Lucien somehow caught hold of the face of the wall, holding us there until the water calmed and we were left at the top of the well, hanging onto a chunk of rock that hadn’t broken off somehow.

  Lucien wiped the water out of his face while he blinked at me. “That was almost fun. If I were a little younger I would find it invigorating. Am I the only one who wants a hot bath and a cup of hot cocoa?”

  I gasped and shivered. “I’d kill for a cup of hot cocoa.”

  He nodded past me. “I don’t think it’ll come to that.”

  A helicopter? A helicopter. Yep. And there at the end of a long rope ladder was Francoise.

  “Hm. I didn’t expect him,” I mumbled.

  Lucien gripped my hand. “We’ll have to stay low until he arrives.”

  Bullets exploded around us, bullets and some kind of shock wave that hit the surface of the water, hopefully keeping things below the surface until we could get away. Lucien handed me up to Francoise then climbed on, like I couldn’t hang on myself.

  Maybe I couldn’t. The wind whipped my hair into Francoise’s face as we flew away from the island. The helicopter peppered the water with shots and that electrical pulse thing again a few times until we neared a fleet of ships. There was an air force carrier, but the helicopter took us to a smaller boat with a blue belly and ‘Siren’ in gold letters on the side.

  Sean’s ship. Francoise nimbly dropped to the helicopter pad with me close at his side. He helped me down the ladder, and there we were with Sean’s crew who stared at me with a variety of weapons in their hands.

  As one, they bowed to me. The captain in his bright yellow slicker stepped forward.

  “No one’s getting to you here, miss.”

  Chapter 41

  I slept beside him in the small bed in the Fielding House med room. He looked perfect. You’d never know that he wasn’t just sleeping the way his pale eyelashes brushed his cheeks. He was connected to tubes, needles inserted in his large veins that I wasn’t supposed to disturb.

  I wasn’t supposed to sleep on the bed, either, but I had to hold his hand so he knew I was there, so he’d know that he had to come back to me. It had only been four days since the poisoning, but it seemed like an eternity.

  Oliver’s fleet had been enough to silence the creepy silkrot and anything else that wanted to rip me to pieces. He’d wanted to stitch me up, Francoise offered for him. I declined, sending Lucien instead. His ear was beautifully fixed and my medic, the cook on Sean’s ship was pretty uncomfortable touching his captain’s wife’s upper thigh, but it was better than Oliver… No. I couldn’t even think of him. Never again.

  Sean sighed and muttered. I gasped and sat up, leaning over him while I stared at his face. His eyelids flickered then went still. Maybe he was dreaming. He was probably just dreaming. He’d stirred a few times in the last few days. Nothing to get my heart racing about.

  His eyes opened and he stared at me. “What happened to your face?”

  I laughed and dropped my forehead against his chest while I tried to breathe and not burst into tears. When I lifted my head again, he was frowning in concentration.

  “I don’t remember. Did you wreck the Chromodome?”

  I shook my head and brushed his beautiful pale eyebrows with my fingers. Really, they were hardly visible, but no less beautiful for that. “I didn’t destroy anything besides Siren’s Rock. Sorry about that.”

  He blinked a few times. “I wasn’t there?”

  “No, you were poisoned during the game. Someone on our team poisoned you. I went a little bit crazy, blamed Spyguy, and sent him away. I’m having my doubts.”

  “If he wanted me dead, I’d be dead. It’s just as well. I didn’t like the way he looked at you.”

  I frowned at him. “He didn’t look at me. No one looks at me and no one ever will again. I’m living in your briefcase from now on.”

  “I don’t have a briefcase.”

  “Of course you do. You have that dark brown shiny thing you put all your stuff in when you go to meetings.”

  “Gen, are you okay? You sound slightly hysterical. I could probably call a nurse for you.”

  That’s when I burst into tears. I hadn’t ruined a shirt for too long, which he apparently agreed with, because he kept his steady hand on my head and just stayed like that, calm and steady. After I got that all out of my system, I sat up and went over to the table. I poured a glass of water and then brought it up and started singing ‘I’m too Sexy’ into it.

  “I am calling someone. Maybe it’s sleep deprivation.”

  I beamed at
him over the edge of the glass. “I’m crazy, but only for not seeing sooner how things really are.” I perched on the edge of his bed with my glass half full of water. I frowned intently at the water. This would be a bad time for it to not work. “You’ve always been real. From the very beginning, you were more real, more substantial than the obsession, my compulsion, or anything else in the world. I want to marry you. I mean, I want to be married to you, Vashni, Soremni and human. Like real. Completely and totally for real.”

  He frowned at me and lifted his hand to check my forehead. “You look like you had a concussion.”

  I turned my face and kissed his palm. His palm was so sweet and lovely. I kissed and nibbled until he pulled away.

  “Can you stop, Gen? You’re kind of freaking me out.”

  I froze with the cup of water. “Am I acting weird? Sorry. I can’t stop. Not yet. Give me a few minutes then I’ll pass out on the floor. Okay?”

  He nodded slightly, not taking his skeptical eyes off me.

  I dropped to my knees beside the bed, propped the glass on his mattress. “Will you marry me?”

  His frown deepened. “Is this a trick question?”

  “No trick. Will you human marry me along with Vashni and Soremni?”

  “Ah.” His frown cleared slightly. “I guess so. It’s mostly a legal contract that they do in court, right?”

  “No. I want a church and a pastor and a big wedding dress and bridesmaids and cake. Flowers. Toasts. The whole thing. And we’re going to bike into the sunset with cans attached to the back and we’re going to camp at the lake for our honeymoon.”

  He blinked at me. “That sounds terrible. I guess it’s not worse than the Soremni lecture.”

  “Is that a yes?”

  He shrugged his broad shoulders. “I’m hungry. After the Soremni wedding feast, I never thought I’d be hungry again. Yes. I’ll human marry you according to tradition. I’ll even have my dad foot the bill for the pre-wedding banquet. Your dad will take care of everything else.”