Bluedawn (A Watermagic Novel, #2)

by Brighton Hill

  Really, I had never been on an official date with anyone. I liked the idea of my first date being with him, but more than anything I was really curious what he had planned.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Love -- bittersweet, irrepressible -- loosens my limbs and I tremble. –SAPPHO, To Atthis

  Dylan took me on a two hour midnight dinner cruise in nearby Marina Del Rey. The ship was filled with mostly teenagers from the local high schools. It was Friday night and apparently everyone was celebrating homecoming on the Pacific Ocean after the high school football games.

  Seeing so many young people made me miss my own high school. This should have been my senior year. I missed my friends and felt disappointed that I wouldn’t be able to compete for my final season on the swim team.

  We were sitting at a long table with lots of other teenagers eating appetizers before the main meal. “Taste this,” Dylan said as he dipped a thin strip of chicken in some sort of teriyaki sauce. He fed it to me which made me laugh.

  “That’s so good.” My eyes lit up as I chewed the sweet, savory tastes.

  For a thin guy I was surprised how much he was enjoying the food. He tried some of everything. And he was funny about it—dipping his fingers in the puddings and licking them off, gnawing on the tiny corn cobs like a cartoon character. I was more than shocked when he started humming as he ate. “My mom does that!” I almost shouted.

  “Bet she doesn’t sing as well as me,” he retorted haughtily.

  “You’re wrong there,” I teased. “She sings like a nightingale.”

  He furrowed his eyebrows. “Nobody sings better than a siren,” he scoffed.

  “Well, she does.” I nodded my head adamantly.

  “Hmmn.” He seemed to consider what I said. “That’s strange.”

  My forehead scrunched up a little. “I guess it is. Really, I never thought about it, but she sings better or at least as good as the triplets do.”

  Just then, we were interrupted by a boy jumping on the table yelling, “Go Ravens! Go!” He was tugging at his hair and making funny faces.

  His friends pulled him off before the manager came over.

  We laughed.

  “Do you miss high school?” I asked Dylan.

  He shook his head. “Actually, I do.” With that admittance, he set his fork down. “Like you, this was supposed to be my senior year.”

  “It just doesn’t seem right to miss out on it all.”

  “At least we’re not dead like the rest of the triplets’ victims.” He stretched back with his hands over his head.

  “I wish they were dead.”

  His eyes widened as he placed his hands behind his head. Even I surprised myself with that declaration. He dropped his hands at his sides, leaning in closer to me as he whispered, “I want to kill them.”

  I tried to read his cold expression to figure out if he was serious. The way he stared at me unwaveringly, I supposed he was.

  “They shouldn’t be allowed to feed on innocent kids.” My body tensed. “There has to be another way for us,” I whispered. “We shouldn’t have to eat human beings to survive.”

  “We’ll find a way.” He squeezed my hand under the table as he glanced around making sure nobody was paying attention to us.

  Just hearing him say that gave me a glimmer of hope. Some of the tension released from my body.

  He stood up. “I want to dance with you,” he said in his mesmerizing voice that sounded like music in my ears.

  “Okay,” I replied weakly, hoping he couldn’t tell that I was blushing.

  Brushing past high schoolers and an older couple that looked out of place, he led me out to the dance floor off to the side of the tables on the deck. A slow song, Belinda Carlyle’s Mad about You, was playing. This is our song,” he grinned as he pulled me into his arms.

  My heart started to throb against his chest. I never had a “song” with a boy before. Something about that made me feel like a normal teenage kid which I liked, instead of the horrible monster I had become.

  The electricity I felt between us was intense. I looked up at his face and saw him smiling. “How do you want to kill them?” I asked, matching his smile.

  We were silent for a minute. I was losing myself in the song and what it now meant to me. Not to mention how his strong hands felt so perfect on my waist.

  He sighed as he looked up at the stars. I stared at him, watching his shaggy dark hair ruffle lightly in the night wind. When he looked down at me, he spun me around.

  As much as I didn’t want to, I couldn’t help but giggle. “Stop,” I begged.

  From what I could tell, he seemed to consider my pleas for a moment, but as soon as he started, he pulled me back close to him.

  I held his shoulders to still the dizziness in my body. “Do you always torture your victims for fun?”

  “Only the one’s I really like.” At that, he grinned.

  “Lucky me,” I teased.

  As much as I didn’t want this dance to end, I realized my bladder was full and if I didn’t make it to the bathroom, I might pee right on the ground. “I’ll meet you at the table,” I said anxiously. “I have to use the restroom.”

  I think he must have noticed that my face was turning red because he laughed. “Don’t fall in,” he muttered.

  “Ha ha,” I said sarcastically, looking over my shoulder as I made my way through the other dancers.

  Looking around, I couldn’t find a restroom. I had to ask one of the waiters who directed me downstairs to the lower deck. Aside from a few kids leaning over the rail chatting and another young couple kissing at the bow, there wasn’t a lot happening down there.

  The bathroom was set off to the side in a dim corner of the ship. I hurried into the ladies’ room. The fluorescent light flickered overhead while some girls with long hair were at the mirror putting on makeup. I hurried into the stall and relieved myself.

  When I stepped out, I had to wiggle my way in between the two girls. One girl’s long black hair caught on my new bracelet. “Oh! I’m sorry,” I said, untangling the strands.

  “No problem at all,” she replied in a mumble as she applied her lipstick. In my embarrassment, I barely looked at her. I wanted to get back to Dylan as quickly as possible.

  But while I was washing my hands, I noticed that the blond was staring at me. “Hailey?” the girl said.

  My jaw clenched. Who would know me? I turned to her and realized who she was. Marine! I was standing between my mother’s French cousins, Marine and Brigitte.

  My pulse sped up. I didn’t know what to do. Surely, they couldn’t be certain that it was me—I looked so different than the last time I saw them when they dropped my mom off in our driveway right before our camping trip. I backed away.

  Brigitte was staring at me now too.

  “You must be mistaking me with someone else,” I finally said, wiping the sweat off of my palms onto my skirt.

  “Wow!” Brigitte exclaimed in a breathy voice. The blood drew from her gorgeous face. She looked like she was about to faint.

  “Josette was right,” Marine gasped. “Look what have they’ve done to you.” Her eyes were wide with disbelief.

  Words caught in my throat. I felt so dizzy myself. My mind was clouding up. I reached for the door handle.

  “Wait,” Marine coaxed. “We can help you, Hailey.”

  I shook my head, trying to still my teeth from chattering. “That’s not my name.” At once, I rushed out of the bathroom. But on my way out I bumped hard into a boy. I looked up at his face. It was Dylan.

  “Hailey!” he said as the girls stood there watching. “What’s wrong?”

  I looked up at him, the words not coming out of my mouth.

  “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” He stroked my hair.

  “It is her,” I heard one of them say.

  “Oh, my!” the other one said.

  “What’s going on?” Dylan asked my mother’s cousins.

  I looked up at his fac
e and saw his nostrils flare as he stared at Brigitte and Marine. “Come on, Hailey. Let’s go.” His voice was stern.

  I just stood there, unable to move.

  “Come on,” Dylan said harsher now. Without waiting for a response, he grabbed me up into his arms and threw me over his shoulder. He started running across the deck. At once, he sprang onto the rail. He looked back for a second as he grabbed me tighter. And then, he dove right into the ocean.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Love's wing moults when caged and captured, Only free, he soars enraptured. –THOMAS CAMPBELL, Freedom and Love

  We hit the water hard, but once our heads broke the surface, Dylan didn’t give me time to catch my breath. “Hurry Hailey. We have to get away.”

  I looked at him with shock in my eyes. “Why the hell did you do that?”

  “There’s no time to explain,” he pleaded. A vein was raised in his neck. He looked horrified.

  We looked back at the ship moving away from us. I saw five bodies, long hair blowing in the wind, jump off the rail like we had. It was surely my mother’s cousins, Brigitte, Marine, Laurent, Pascal, and Marcel and they were after us!

  “I’m with you,” I said, squeezing his hand.

  “Swim as fast as you can for shore.” He held my face in his hands. I sensed that he already felt defeated. “No matter what don’t stop swimming and when you get to shore, run as fast as you can. Hide.”

  I was so confused. “But…” I wanted to explain to him that the people after us were my relatives and that they would never hurt us. But he was already pulling me down into the water.

  I swam as fast as I could beside him, trying to make sense in my mind of everything that was occurring. The way Marine and Brigitte spoke to me in the bathroom, it sounded like my mother knew what had happened to me. But she couldn’t possibly know. How could she?

  They said something about Josette being right about what had happened to me and then they continued on saying, “Look what they have done to you.” They must be making reference to my physical appearance. And who were they referring to when they said “they”? Could they possibly know about the sirens? I didn’t understand.

  As we swam, I kept thinking and thinking. It didn’t make sense that my mother’s cousins had jumped off the ship and were now swimming after us. Human beings don’t do that. The fall would kill them. And if it somehow didn’t, it was highly unlikely that they could survive so far out in the ocean without life rafts.

  The more I thought about it, the more my suspicions started coming together. All five of my mother’s cousins had long hair and stunning appearances. That wasn’t normal. Aside from the sirens, I had never seen such attractive people. And the way they acted, speaking in unison and eating strange foods.

  In the past, I simply imagined that all French people were odd and ate weird stuff, but none of the dishes at the French restaurant where I ate my lunch today were weird. There were no sand crab snacks or raw fish with cream and lard like Mom ate. The owner who was French acted normal enough.

  Mom! My mother was just like her cousins. She had long hair, was beautiful in appearance, ate strange dishes, and sang like an angel. Were Mom and her cousins also sirens?

  No! It couldn’t be. My own mother?

  My adrenaline was racing even faster now as we swam at full speed. Why would Dylan be rushing away from another group of sirens? Were they warring groups?

  And if they were sirens, why did he look so scared, almost defeated before he even tried to get away? If there was some sort of feud between them, wouldn’t he just fight back?

  We must have swum at full speed for about twenty minutes when we shot to the surface for breath. “We’re coming close to shore,” Dylan whispered. His face looked pale like he was riddled with fear. “I don’t understand it.” He shook his head. “I don’t know why they haven’t attacked.” He looked around.

  There was blackness surrounding us. The stars were overhead twinkling on the surface and the shore was too far away to see. It was so peaceful in the gentle dark waters.

  “They’re much faster than us.” He continued to look around. “I get the feeling they are watching us.”

  “Dylan,” I whispered. “They’re my mother’s cousins.”

  “What?” he asked seemingly distracted.

  “The five people we are trying to escape—they are my relatives. I don’t think they will hurt us.”

  He looked at me confused. “What are you talking about, Hailey?”

  “It’s just what I said.” My voice was adamant. “They are French Exchange students at Santa Monica High School. My mother is their chaperone. She looks after them.”

  His mind seemed to reel. I got the feeling he was trying to put pieces of a puzzle together in his brain. “When we were in Carlsbad near the campsite where I met you, Wren told me to find out as much about your mother as I could.”

  “That’s odd,” I replied, recalling how my dad told me that Dylan had asked him about Mom when he saw him in the woods behind our campsite.

  “I thought it was odd too,” he continued. “She was really focused on you and your mother. Gia had said that we were going to Carlsbad to get a girl for Travis.”

  I nearly choked. “Travis?” I kicked my feet harder to hold my head out of the water.

  He lifted a dark eyebrow. “What? You don’t like Travis?”

  “Ooooo!”

  “I’ll take that as a dramatic no!” He seemed amused with me. “Well, Travis messed up that at ‘Let’s suck face.’” He chuckled. “What an idiot.”

  “Is that why you hit him?”

  Distracted, he seemed to be listening for something now. His gaze turned back to me. “Wren was so pissed off that he screwed that one up. Then she put me on the job.” He smiled wryly. “Hence, our chance meeting at the mini market.”

  “Why do you think she wanted to convert me to a siren?” I asked.

  “Now that you told me that the mers are your relatives, I think it has to do with that.”

  My eyebrows knitted together. “The mers? What’s that?”

  If he wasn’t amused before, he certainly was now. “Mermaids, mermen. You know,” he said sarcastically under his breath.

  “My Mom and her cousins are merfolk?”

  He laughed out loud. “Uh…yeah,” his teasing voice was matter of fact.

  My mind was reeling at that. I leaned back and stared up at the stars. “No frickin’ way.” But it made sense. My mother was a mermaid. Her crazy night swims, inexplicable disappearances, her enchanting voice.

  “Lyra told me that sirens and mers hate each other.”

  I bit my lip. “She told you that?”

  He nodded. “Yeah. She said sirens and mers are enemies because a long time ago they both wanted the same island and during their fight for it Wren killed William who was a mer. Then the mers killed one of the siren’s slaves as revenge. There has been a feud ever since. Also the sirens don’t follow Trident laws. We are a lawless group that puts the mers in danger with the humans by our indiscriminate killings. Therefore the mers want to kill us.”

  “Is that why you were so afraid when you saw Marine and Brigitte on the ship?” I watched his eyes closely. They glimmered under the starlight.

  “I wasn’t afraid,” he joked. “You’re even newer at being a siren than me, but as you develop, you will come closer in touch with your instincts and intuitions. I knew they were mers by their scent and by their mannerisms.”

  “Are mers dangerous?” I stared at his facial features intently.

  His eyes widened. “Very dangerous.” Then he smiled. “But so are we.”

  “Why were you afraid then?”

  At that, his voice lifted as he spoke, “I wasn’t afraid.” He glared at me teasingly. “Mers are almost always with their school, so I knew if there were two mers at the bathroom, more would be nearby. A group of mers would easily tear us both to shreds. Their hatred runs deep.”

  “Do you think my mother kills
people like the sirens do?” The idea disturbed me immensely.

  “I assume so, but I just don’t know. I only know the bits and pieces that I’ve overheard the triplets talking about or what Lyra told me.”

  I just couldn’t imagine my mother killing people. She wouldn’t do that. Not her. No way.

  He ran his fingers through his dark wet hair. “What I didn’t foresee was that they would jump in the ocean after us. They are much faster and more capable in the water. They don’t have to come up for air like we do.”

  “Where do you think they went?” I asked.

  At that, five heads popped out of the water.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Dream as if you’ll live forever. Live as if you’ll die today. –James Dean

  “Hi, Hailey,” Brigitte, Marine, Laurent, Pascal, and Marcel said in unison.

  “Uh…hi?” I replied, not knowing what to make of this surreal situation.

  Dylan pulled me closer to him.

  “We’re not going to hurt you or Hailey, Dylan,” Laurent said, his bronze skin and golden brown hair shimmering slightly under the starlight.

  Marine’s long blond hair fanned out on the water. “We know you’re a victim, Dylan. You didn’t choose this life. Soon the sirens will kill you like they always do with their slaves once they tire of them.”

  I looked at Dylan, my face must have gone pale. He put his hand on my back.

  “You aren’t our enemy,” Pascal added. He had long black hair and his eyes were electric blue like the rest of his school.

  “The triplets are our enemies,” they all said at once.

  “Oh, Hailey,” Brigitte sang. “We’ve been so broken up over you.” She had sea shells woven into her long black hair.

  “We feared you were dead,” Marcel explained. His hair was also long and luxurious, but it was a darker shade of brown than Laurent’s.

  Marine nodded. “The police surmised you were dead, but your mother believed you were alive. She found a medallion of a mermaid with a sapphire crystal dagger in her motorhome. It was the same piece that the triplets stole from us so long ago…”