There was something heated, yet guarded in his gaze as the words filtered through the air. An invitation and a warning, merged into one.
I shook my head. “Only in water. Only when I have my tail…”
The same tail that shimmered and warmed, wrapped in a haze of magic now that the final droplets of water had evaporated from my scales.
“How—how can you even do that? A mermaid shifting is not a legend I’ve ever heard before…”
I lowered my gaze, knowing this was the best opportunity I would get, yet suddenly so very afraid to take it. Without words, I pushed off the ground and threw the damp strands of lilac hair across my shoulders.
“From what I’ve heard, it should be impossible,” I confessed, only now daring to meet the full, crushing weight of Santino’s gaze. “But I wasn’t born a mermaid. I was made into one.”
4
If surprise and confusion had been the core of Santino’s reaction when he had seen my true form emerge from the water, what lay on his features now was nothing but utter bewilderment. His gaze dipped down to my human legs, almost as if he expected them to change back into a tail at a moment’s notice.
“Water is the trigger,” I offered, waving down with a hand. “Or the lack of it for the shift back.”
He dragged his fingers along the side of his jaw when he caught himself staring. It seemed as if he were ashamed, but as his silver-rimmed eyes fell on my face, there were no traces of his discomfort any longer. Only a hint of a realization that had been absent before.
“The shift,” he said hoarsely. “The shift affected you.”
I nodded, then angled my head at the isolated stretch of the beach reaching southwest. Without words, Santino fell into step with me as I started to walk, ignoring the sloshing of the sea still beckoning me to enter with its gentle lulling melody.
It was only when we had crossed a fair distance under the hulking cliff that he spoke again. “I knew the battle reshaped our reality, but I had no idea it could have this”—he motioned at my body with an elegant wave of his hand—“effect on people.”
There wasn’t a single soul in the world ignorant of the consequences the War brought. Even a distant morass like my former home had heard loud and clear of the showdown a group of supernaturals and humans had against the darker forces who had wanted to turn the world into a bloodbath. In the end, the good guys had won and restored order, but the price of their victory was a fundamental change to the fabric of our reality nobody had expected or been prepared for.
Where magic had once been leashed, it now flowed freely, entwined in every aspect of our existence and causing surprises to pop up at every step. Some bigger than others.
I sighed and glanced sideways at him, drinking in the sharp lines of his profile. “When the magic wave hit, we all felt it.”
A nod from Santino.
“But unlike the rest, when the phantom tendrils of power breezed through my body, they didn’t leave on the other side. Instead, they took residence there, burning up my essence and turning me into something else… Into—well, into a mermaid.”
A hint of hysterical laughter slipped into my voice as I said that last word. Mermaid.
Regardless of how many times I repeated who I was to myself, it still sounded foreign on my tongue. Absurd, even.
With my vila grandmother and the life I’d led in the morass, I knew there was a grain of truth to every myth. I even knew mermaids existed. But being aware of tailed maidens who belong to the sea and actually becoming one were two very different things.
I didn’t know if I could ever fully accept what had transpired. Who I became.
Santino’s gaze drifted over to me, steady, but with a flicker of shadows darkening the silver of his eyes. “That’s why your family is after you? Because you’re a mermaid?”
I bit back the bitterness. “Let’s just say they’re prejudiced against water nymphs with tails.”
Something about that stopped Santino in his tracks, and I had the sudden suspicion he knew more about the supernatural than I’d initially presumed. We walked a few more steps in silence, the air between us growing thick with anticipation until, finally, he phrased the question I was dreading, yet knew would inevitably come.
“What were you? Before?”
I looked away, hating the shame that washed over me with a burning passion, then trailed my gaze along the horizon. When I had died and, after a wave of darkness, woke up—not in Veles’s realm, as I had expected, but in the embrace of murky, languid waters—I was only glad I still drew breath. That, somehow, I had been saved.
For long, long seconds, all I could think of was how grateful I was that the world hadn’t been snatched away from me yet. That I had been gifted another chance.
Then reality settled in.
I was breathing.
But I was underwater.
Physically, there was nothing different from the way my body had always been. At least on the outside. Inside, however, there was a foreign presence—a kind of melodic, seductive power that slithered through my flesh and beckoned me to use it.
I didn’t know what it was or how it got there. I couldn’t even tell how it was possible to draw breath this deep under the surface. I panicked, kicking my legs in a desperate attempt to reach for air…when I noticed I wasn’t alone.
There were several women submerged in the water beside me, all young and enticing, with dresses that billowed around their lithe bodies in a graceful, seductive display.
Spirits.
They were all spirits, returned to this world because of their past mistakes. Of the punishment others had brought upon them—or they had given themselves. They were unclean souls, denied the eternal peace of Veles’s realm.
And so was I.
“Rusalka,” I whispered, my voice so weak it nearly got swept away by the breeze. “Before the change, I was a Rusalka.”
A chilling shadow slid across Santino’s face. I tried to speak, tried to utter some weak apology, but words failed me. Nothing I could say would ease the fact that I was a spirit. That I had spent the past century living as the most ruthless kind of water nymph, a delicate weapon designed to bring the worst of consequences to men who fell under my spell—lungs filled with water and a still heart, buried beneath the waves forever.
I might not have murdered out of joy—or some twisted satisfaction like some of my sisters preferred to spend their time—but my hands were stained with blood nonetheless. A lot of it.
“Santino, I—” My words morphed into a scream as he lunged at me.
His powerful body rammed into mine and smashed my back against the hard, pebbled ground, violence pulsing off his skin thick enough to choke on.
The air whizzed from my lungs as Santino’s body kept me pinned down, the pebbles biting into my back so viciously they drew blood. I squirmed once the talons of shock loosened their grip and fear-driven instinct finally kicked in, but all I managed to achieve was scrape my skin harder.
Trapped in this human form, Santino was stronger than me, and no amount of hoping it were otherwise was going to change that.
A string of frantic curses and panicked cries exploded in my head. The irony of dying at the hands of the one who I’d foolishly believed would be able to understand, if not help, threatened to drag me under. This… This couldn’t be happening. And yet the truth of the situation was a force I couldn’t deny.
I was utterly and absolutely screwed.
“Stop. Fighting,” Santino hissed, his fingers digging into my skin harder.
I must have been going mad, but the sheer, unyielding command in his voice pierced right through the veil of panic and made me do precisely that. Stop. It was irrational and unfounded—and probably more than a little damning—but I forced myself to calm down, becoming pliant in his arms.
Death had been a long time knocking. Perhaps even truly deserved.
Escaping it once was all the bitter luck I would get.
I loosened a bre
ath, consoling myself that at least it wouldn’t be my sisters who had gotten the better of me, when realization slammed into my face on the wings of a coppery smell.
I wasn’t the only one who was bleeding.
Crimson welled on the outside of Santino’s arm, just beneath his left shoulder. But before I managed to take a better look at the sinister trickle, we were both rolling down the beach, set right on the collision course with the sea. I squeaked in protest as water splattered onto my side, dancing across my skin before it embraced me whole and awakened the inner power.
As the warmth of magic tingled all the way down to my toes, Santino shifted the iron grip he still had on me. He kicked his feet, taking us farther away from shore and into the inky embrace of night. I pulled my weight once the change settled in, grabbing onto Santino tighter as I pushed on, my wide-spread fin granting us greater speed than his human legs ever could.
We crossed a fair distance under water, but eventually, Santino had to go up for air. He’d tried to hide his discomfort, almost stubbornly refusing to rise once I shifted direction, and yet for all his determination, he couldn’t keep me from hearing his body’s burning cry for oxygen rippling through the currents. I resurfaced with him, holding him firmly above the restless waves, but before I even opened my mouth to ask what went wrong, Santino clasped his hand over my lips.
Warmth sizzled through me at the touch, the tips of his fingers gentle as they fanned from cheekbone to jaw.
I couldn’t have spoken even if I wanted to. Not when I was now the one who found herself at a loss for breath.
Santino shook his head in silent warning, then carefully spun around, examining our surroundings. Torturously slow, his hand slid across my mouth as he moved, until, finally, he lay that staggering warmth on my shoulder. Firm, but not restraining. If anything, the gesture felt protective.
I remained quiet as he studied the beach, blinking past the darkness to see whatever it was Santino was searching for. But Moon Bay appeared undisturbed, with only the high cliffs and the narrow stretch of shore snaking below, composing a sight of perfect serenity. Precisely as it had been when we were still standing upon it.
Likely coming to the same conclusion, Santino let out a long sigh, then faced me once more. The silver rim of his eyes burned as brightly as the moon above us, the elegant lines of his features stark, speaking of a man who was accustomed to more than a fair share of unwelcome pressure.
He pushed away a strand of his hair, more out of reflex than necessity, it seemed, and asked, “Can they track you through water?”
Taken aback by our maddening roll, but even more so by the change I witnessed take place in Santino, I needed a second to realize he was referring to my nymph sisters.
I nodded. “If I’m in it long enough, the currents will speak of my presence.”
“Cazzo!” He glanced back at the shore, then towards the curving sea line stretching towards Piran. “How far do you think you can go without being noticed?”
This was already longer than I had ever dared to stay in the sea. But I shook myself from the clutches of fear and made an honest, objective guess. “Fiesa, I think.”
“That’ll do.”
He let go of me and started swimming without another word, his motions elegant, if somewhat strained. The wound. I cursed myself softly for forgetting and caught up with him in a few long strokes, then eased to match his pace.
When he kept on swimming despite my obvious ogling, I let a whisper cut through the darkness. “I—I can carry you.”
Santino gave me a surprised look, halting mid stroke. “What?”
“Your arm. Your—your injury. You can grab onto me…if you’re not repulsed.”
A hint of a smile touched his lips, so that when he shook his head, I knew it wasn’t that last part of my statement driving him to refuse my aid. A weight I hadn’t known I carried loosened inside me.
“I’ll only slow you down in case you need to run,” he added.
My surprise must have shown because he nudged his chin at his shoulder and explained, “That was a gunshot that got me, cara. But I believe it was meant for you.”
5
When the magic once again swirled and shimmered, whisking away the tail and replacing it with human feet, Santino offered me his hand. I lifted myself up with his aid and shot him a grateful look as I clutched a beach towel tightly around me. He’d stolen it from the nearby camp in Fiesa, along with a pair of flip-flops, the instant it became clear my dress wouldn’t dry fast enough for me to reclaim my legs. I could have chucked it off, but walking around pantyless until the summer air finally sucked out the moisture from the fabric was something I just couldn’t do. Dead of night or not. At least this way, any stragglers we might cross paths with could write my semi nakedness off to a midnight dip in the sea.
I was already standing on my own two feet, steadily at that, but Santino didn’t let go of me. The warmth of his touch filled me with a sense of surety and dulled the chills crawling down my skin, although it failed to dissipate them completely. We hadn’t talked much as we swam at full speed from Moon Bay to Fiesa, trying to outrace the inevitable spill of my presence across the water. Not a single word beyond making sure we were both all right. But I knew…
I knew that if it hadn’t been for him, that bullet would have ended its lethal travel lodged in the center of my head.
While a part of me hissed at the reality I should have expected from the moment I fled the morass, some small, broken bit of my soul ached at the thought of such betrayal. Of such wrath.
As long as I drew breath, my sisters’ anger and thirst for blood would creep after me like a shadow, waiting for that opportunity to ensconce me in its wisps of death. I winced. A hundred years of shared history, erased by a single flick of a tail.
“How did you know?” I asked Santino once we started moving in Piran’s general direction, our steps silent and figures carefully concealed in the deepest of shadows nature offered. “About the gunman?”
“Instinct.”
I gently tugged on his hand, the one still closed around mine, and looked up at him. “How?”
He sighed. There was a hint of pain in the way the sound unfolded, so unlike the easygoing man I’d come to know. “I was police before I came here. Working undercover… Either you learn to listen to your gut or you end up dead. There’s no in-between.”
“I didn’t hear any shots—”
“Silencer,” Santino cut in, then added more softly once he noted my confusion, “Goes on the barrel and muffles the sound.”
“Oh.”
I had a hard time envisioning such a contraption, but I didn’t press him for more. Although my father had had a passion for collecting guns, I’d never had any particular interest in them myself. Somehow, I doubted I would have understood the way a silencer worked even if Santino explained the mechanics behind it in detail. I bit my lip and moved forward, although our hands remained entwined.
“How long have you been a Rusalka?” he asked quietly.
The words stilled my breath. I stared at the rocky path winding before me, hoping to the gods he would let the subject go if I stayed silent for long enough.
I couldn’t stop thinking about the shift in his demeanor when I’d told him of my former self. That flash of darkness, there one moment and gone the next. We’d barely started to inch away from the tension that had sprung to life between us—I didn’t want to lose this comfort. Not yet.
But I felt Santino’s blue-and-silver eyes burn into my skin with a hunger that left me no choice but to cut open old wounds. Just another ugly truth, floating to the surface like seaweed.
“World War I,” I mumbled.
Santino stopped in his tracks. I stared at my feet, afraid to put a visual to the revulsion I felt pulsing from his body. Dead for a century—who could blame him for seeing me as anything but a walking corpse?
Santino, however, didn’t pull his hand away. “How old were you?”
�
�Nineteen.”
I offered no more, and he didn’t demand it. He led me through the brush, my flip-flops catching on small pebbles as we crossed the uneven terrain. The less than ideal circumstances slowed our progress, but we’d established early on that we didn’t dare risk the seaside path. Or its proximity to the water. Staying in the sea for as long as we had had been dangerous enough. If my sisters decided to show… There wouldn’t be a damn thing I could do to stop them from ensnaring Santino.
The thought alone was enough to turn my stomach into a tight, painful knot.
“What happened?” he asked as we climbed up a small hill, his grip keeping me steady. “After the change?”
He motioned to my legs, much to my relief, inquiring about the second time magic had reshaped my being. Not the first.
Sadly, the memories weren’t any less unpleasant.
“Rusalkas have some long-standing hostility towards mermaids,” I admitted, the absurdity of the words almost bitterly laughable as they fluttered into the night air. “They never told me why and I didn’t ask, but I always believed it had something to do with the fact that we—them,” I quickly corrected myself, “are spirits of the dead, locked in ageless flesh, while mermaids are, by all accounts, living beings.” I hesitated, unsure whether to enter these murky waters but did so nonetheless. “The death every Rusalka suffers before she becomes a water-bound soul is, by nature, traumatic. Suicide or violence. There are hardly any other alternatives. And life, for them… It’s something to be taken against a person’s will, not celebrated or cherished. I—I fought the impulse, refused to become so…jaded. I didn’t want to let my own mistakes—my own choices—shape me into a monster that resented the beauty of living. But it’s strong, Santino. The impulse to kill is strong enough to drive even the most sensible person insane.
“But mermaids… They embody the essence of a water nymph without the cloak of loss slung across their shoulders. Not to mention that their seductions don’t have to result in death, whereas every man a Rusalka puts under her spell wanders into his watery grave sooner rather than later.”
Sirens and Scales Page 77
