“It’s the only shot we have,” Brad said.
“Are you that desperate for revenge?”
“It’s not about that anymore,” Brad said. “She’ll keep killing until somebody stops her.”
“I wish there was another way,” Blanche said. “I wish…”
“There’s not,” Brad said.
“Mom!” Jared ran down the steps so fast his footsteps sounded like thunder. He skidded to a stop in the kitchen. “She’s gone. Mykaela’s gone.”
“What?”
“She’s not in her room.” Jared held out his hand. “This was on her pillow.”
Dylan swiped it from him, and then gripped his fingers tight around it. “It’s the necklace Morrigan used to control me.”
“Morrigan has Mykaela?” Brad stood up from the table with a jerk. “She’s always one step ahead! What are we going to do?”
“We have to find her.”
“How?” Brad whipped back around to face him. “She’s probably dead by now.”
“No,” Dylan said. “She wouldn’t kill her unless I was there to watch.”
“Great, that’s reassuring.”
“We’ll find her,” Dylan promised. “Just give me a minute.”
He ran out of the house, and down the beach at lightning speed, straight into the water. The force of it didn’t slow him a bit.He ran until it covered his head. When he was sure he was deep enough to drown out the sounds of the land, he closed his eyes and listened.
He listened for the underwater vibrations Morrigan’s energy would send. He listened for the echo of Mykaela’s cry.
He heard nothing. Not a single sound from either of them, but that told him everything he needed to know. He broke his head above the surface and shouted at Brad.
“Meet me at that cave.” He yelled to Brad, who’d followed him onto the beach. He pointed in the direction of the cave. “I’ll take this way.”
He dove under the water and made the swim to the cave in a few short minutes. He pulled himself up onto the small ledge looking over the sea. Hearing Mykaela whimper, he ran into the cave and found her tied upon the ledge above the small pond. Her wrists were bound behind her back; her ankles were roped with seaweed.
He darted to meet her, but just as he reached her, something slung him back against the farthest wall. Sprawling against the stone, he banged his head.
Morrigan rose out of the water, hovering a foot over the surface. Her cackle filled the small space around them and bounced off every wall.
“I knew she was the surefire way to get you here.” She planted her hands on her hips and looked down her long, pointy nose at him. “You didn’t expect that plan of yours to work, did you?”
“Just let her go,” Dylan said, rising to his feet. “I’m here now. You’ve got what you want.”
“And you’re so sure you know what I want, are you?” She mocked him in a singsong voice. “You think I want you to come back and be our leader, all because I believe in you oh-so-much.”
He panicked, realizing how out of his control this situation was. His gaze darted around the small room, looking for another exit or some weapon that would magically appear and save the day.
“Think again, sweetheart.” She lowered herself to the rocky ledge. “I simply want to get rid of the competition.”
“Either way,” he said, “you’ve got what you want. Let her go.”
She shook her head. “You have no idea who she is, do you?” She looked back at Mykaela with a sly grin. “You don’t know what she is.”
Chapter Twenty-One
The Siren’s Song
Mykaela didn’t understand what Morrigan was talking about. The fear built in her pounding heart when Morrigan turned to look at her. She struggled against the seaweed tied around her wrists and ankles, but it refused to give.
“It’s enchanted, honey,” Morrigan said, as if speaking to a child. “I told you, you can’t get loose.” Turning back to Dylan, she planted her hands on her hips. “You guys claim to be in love.” Morrigan shook her head from side to side. “But you don’t know who she is. She doesn’t know who you really are. What you did to her.”
Mykaela rolled her eyes, so sick of Morrigan’s self-righteous speeches. Ignoring the Siren, she looked past her to her boyfriend. “Dylan, what’s she talking about?”
“Mykaela—”
Morrigan stepped between them again. “You’ll find out soon enough, sweetheart.”
“Please,” Dylan said. “Just let her go, I’ll do whatever you want.”
“Tempting, really, but I can’t.” Morrigan turned to look at both of them. “She has what I need, Dylan. She can hear my song. Not everybody can, but you know what that means. She’s the Keeper.”
Mykaela was sure she couldn’t have heard that right. The Keeper? What did that mean?
“What?” Dylan’s shocked voice mimicked her thoughts, although the dazed expression on his face showed he knew exactly what ‘the Keeper’ meant. “She can’t be. You’re wrong.”
“She’s the one we’ve been waiting for, Dylan—the key to the vault where your soul is kept—where every soul affected by the curse goes. She’s the only one who can find it, and the only one who can open it. All those souls, just sitting around and waiting for someone to convert them to power. With that power inside me, I’ll rule the seven seas, and all of the oceans. So, you see, I want those souls. I need them. So, deary,” Morrigan whirled around and sashayed toward Mykaela again, “tell me where the vault is and we’ll call it a day.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she whimpered. “You’re wrong. It’s not me.”
“It is you. Only the Keeper can hear my song, like you did when your friend died.”
It was just the boost she needed—the grief of losing Charity. It was like some internal switch flipped, and primal instinct kicked in.
“She doesn’t know,” Dylan said. “She’s telling the truth.”
Rage flaring on her face, Morrigan stood up and started toward Dylan again. “You know, maybe I should just kill you right now.”
While Morrigan was distracted, Mykaela slid her shirt up enough to grab the knife she kept tucked into a holster fastened on the waistband of her jeans. Keeping her eyes on Morrigan’s back, she slipped the leather cover off the blade and used it to slice through the enchanted seaweed.
“I have to say, Dylan. I overestimated you.” Morrigan laughed. “I can’t believe you even for one second thought I would hand over the crown to you. I made you who you are. I deserve it, not you.”
Morrigan still faced away from Mykaela, so she quickly sliced the knife through the seaweed around her ankles.
“You can kill me if you want,” Morrigan said, and Mykaela felt her heart thump in fear. Then she realized she was talking to Dylan. “But, more will come. They’ll kill you both, and they’ll do it slowly. I’m doing you a favor.”
Mykaela wrapped her hand around the knife, the way she’d seen Brad do, and gripped it tight to keep her hand from shaking. She raised it in the air and flew to her feet.
Morrigan whipped around. “Stupid child!” she bellowed. “Don’t you even want to know what he did to you? To your family?” With the wave of a hand, she pulled the knife from Mykaela’s grasp. It fell to the ground and slid to Morrigan’s feet.
Morrigan laughed again. She turned back to Dylan. “Boy, you really picked a bright one, didn’t you? Seriously, she’s brilliant.”
Mykaela stared down at the knife at Morrigan’s feet, and felt as helpless as when she was drowning. Then she remembered the necklace in her pocket.
She pulled the seashell necklace out. She prayed it would work. If it didn’t, she would die.
Mykaela leapt to her feet, holding the necklace like a whip in one hand. She charged at Morrigan, but she spun around and caught Mykaela by her wrist. Morrigan brought her other hand up and closed her fingers around Mykaela’s throat.
“You don’t give up, do you?” Morrigan s
narled, hurling Mykaela across the pond and into the side of the cave.
Waves of pain stunned her, radiating through her body. She tried to shake it off, to force herself to focus, but the scenery around her was blurry. The necklace. Where did the necklace go?
Mykaela stood, her legs wobbling for a second before she regained her strength. She saw Dylan across the pool of water that separated them. He held the knife in his hand, but Morrigan pinned him against the wall. They grappled for control of the blade, neither willing to forfeit.
Mykaela searched the floor around her for the necklace. She didn’t know how or why, but she knew the strand of seashells was the key to Morrigan’s demise.
She finally found the necklace by the entrance, opposite of Morrigan and Dylan. She ran over and scooped it up, then circled around until she was behind them.
As if sharing some telepathic message, Dylan grabbed Morrigan’s arms as she turned, binding them at her sides. Mykaela lunged forward and wrapped the necklace around Morrigan’s throat as tight as she could.
Morrigan cried out, and the cave around them shook. Mykaela felt like a magical force was trying to push her away, but she held on to the necklace, straining to stay on her feet when she felt like she could be knocked over. With a scream that resounded all around them, Morrigan erupted into a burst of water that splashed at their feet.
Panting, Mykaela looked up at Dylan. “Is she dead?”
Dylan nodded. “You trapped her with the power in the necklace. I don’t think she could have escaped.”
Mykaela’s mind wanted to linger on the words I don’t think, but there were more pressing concerns. “What was she talking about?”
“There’s been a prophecy floating around for over a century. It says a girl will come. She’ll break the curse by opening the vault where our souls are kept, and set us free, so we can move on like we’re supposed to.” Dylan reached out, flinching when she pulled away. “She’s called the Keeper.”
Her head was spinning, and she couldn’t believe what she’d heard. There was no way she was the fulfillment of a prophecy, right? Even in the paranormal world she’d discovered, that was impossible. Besides, none of that mattered right now. “That’s not what I meant. About my dad. What’d she mean?”
He swallowed hard, his eyes squinting in pain. “Mykaela…”
She backed away from him, her heart pounding. “It was you, wasn’t it? Those murders ten years ago?”
His voice cracked as if he might cry. “Yes.”
“And my father?” she asked. “What happened to him?”
His lips quivered and his head tilted with sorrow and pity. It pulled at the corners of his eyes and made his forehead crease with wrinkles. She remembered that same look from the day he’d saved her life. The day he’d told her Charity was dead.
It felt as if he’d sucked the wind out of her lungs, ripped her heart from her chest with his own hand. He’d shattered her into millions of tiny shards of glass, each one stabbing at the other to create the most unbearable pain.
She stumbled backward and caught herself against the smooth stone of the wall. “Tell me it’s not true.” The words came out in a whimper surrounded by a sob. “Tell me you didn’t, Dylan. Tell me…”
“Mykaela, I didn’t know…okay? I didn’t know I would meet you, I didn’t know…” He walked toward her as he spoke, with his arms outstretched and ready to wrap around her. “I’m not that guy anymore. I would never—”
When he reached her, she bent down and swooped up her knife, and pressed the tip of the shinning blade against his chest. “You need to go.”
He stared at her, his eyes locked against hers, with the point of the knife stabbing into his skin. His lips parted as if he would beg, plead his case and ask for forgiveness. Then they shut again, and his eyes softened. “You don’t know the whole story.”
She yanked off her necklace and hurled it at him. It bounced off his chest and tumbled into the water, swirling out of sight. “I want you to get out of my town, right now. Go back to wherever the hell you came from.” Her voice trembled with every word, and the knife shook against his chest. “If you ever come back, I’ll kill you.”
“Mykaela, please. Let me explain.”
“Go!”
He flinched as her voice echoed in the hollow room. He backed away from her, but just as he exited the cave, he said, “I will wait for you. Forever.”
“You’ll waste your time.”
As she watched him dive into the ocean, she collapsed against the wall of the cave and stared at the knife in her hand, the knife she’d used to exile Dylan. Did that really just happen?
Like when Charity died, she expected to wake up and find that it was all a bad dream. It just didn’t seem possible that Dylan was responsible for her father’s death, for the pain and suffering of her family and half the town.
She heard footsteps and whirled around with the knife ready, but she only saw Brad and Jared. The relief flooded her, quick and warm and comforting, like a blast of sunshine after a treacherous storm.
She was so grateful to see them that she wept. Horrible sobs choked themselves in her throat when Jared rushed forward to take the knife from her hands. He looked down at it, at the water droplets that formed a puddle at their feet. “What happened?”
“Morrigan,” she said. “She’s dead.”
“How?” Brad squinted at her, confused. “Nobody knew how…”
“With this.” Exhausted, Mykaela tossed the necklace to Jared. “I used her song against her.”
“And Dylan?” Brad looked around the cave, at the exit on the other side.
“He’s dead, too.”
Like so many other times, she didn’t know why she’d lied. Maybe it was easier to pretend he was dead, than to tell them he killed her father. She felt disgusted with herself all over again. How could she still be protective of him, after everything that happened? After everything he’d done?
Dylan killed her father. Even that didn’t kill her love for him.
She walked past them both and out into the sunshine. It seemed too bright, like it was trying too hard, and it annoyed her.
“Mykaela, wait.”
She stopped at Brad’s voice, and reluctantly turned to face him. “Not right now.”
“I just…I wanted to say…thank you.” He switched his weight from one foot to the other and peered at her. Mykaela half expected him to call out liar as he usually did. This time, though, he didn’t have a clue. “If you ever want to train…I think you’d make a great Hunter.”
She felt numb, inside and out, and she couldn’t find the strength to answer him, so she turned around and left, leaving them all behind.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The Huntress
For the next week, Mykaela stayed in her room, curled up in her bed, with the curtains drawn and the lights turned off. She’d only sit up when Blanche forced her to eat, only shower when she was dragged out of bed.
She hated herself. For lying, for not telling her mother the truth about what happened to her father. Most of all, she hated Dylan.
It was his fault, every bit of it. He’d been killing people, and her father tried to stop him, and lost. She hated him for wanting to be human, for saving her life, for washing up on the shore and captivating her from the start.
She hated him, and she should have killed him while she had the chance.
The bedroom door creaked open, letting in a shaft of light. Blanche stepped into the room, shutting the door behind her. “Honey, you’re scaring me.”
She walked over to the bay windows and pulled open the curtains. Spears of sunlight pierced Mykaela’s eyes and impaled her senses. Groaning, she rolled over to face the door.
“Come on, honey. You need to get up.”
“I don’t want to.” She tried to pull her pillow over her face but Blanche yanked it away.
“I found this in Dylan’s room,” she said. “I thought you might want it.”
Relu
ctantly, Mykaela sat up and crossed her legs so Blanche could sit down. Blanche held out a wooden box, and she immediately recognized it as the wood Dylan was carving the day she asked him to help her find the truth about her father. If she’d known what pain the truth would bring, she never would have asked for it.
Taking a deep breath, she took the small box.
“Thanks,” she said.
Blanche brought a hand to Mykaela’s shoulder for comfort. “I’m so sorry that all of this happened to you. I just wanted to protect you for as long as I could.”
“Did you know?” Mykaela asked. “About what I can do?”
Blanche nodded as her eyes traveled over Mykaela’s face. “When you were a little girl, you would hear it all the time. The song would draw you out toward the ocean—we almost lost you once—so we kept you away from the water as much as we could. I know it’s silly. We should have taught you to protect yourself, instead of trying to shelter you.”
“But what does it mean?”
“You’ve been called to break the curse. To save hundreds of people.”
“They’re not people,” she cried. “They’re murderous, soul-thirsty villains, Mom. Maybe they deserve to be cursed.”
Blanche didn’t seem the least bit fazed by her daughter’s outburst, but then, she had no idea where her hatred for Dylan’s race came from. “Prophecy or not, you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.”
After Blanche left, Mykaela found herself staring down at the little box that Dylan made. It fit perfectly cradled between her hands. It looked like a treasure chest, with a small brass clasp holding it shut. On top, the image of a tiny dove perched on an olive branch stuck out at her.
Soul of the Sea Page 19
