by Skye Malone
It almost felt like someone was letting them in.
I swallowed, pushing the thought away. Liana and her three cohorts aside, the whole world wasn’t in a conspiracy. Especially not one of that scale.
So this was an anomaly. A disturbing one, but one that – like everything else – I’d deal with when I got home.
When Chloe was gone.
A grimace twisted my face and it took effort to drive it away. She had to go back. It was the safest option left.
Trying to make myself believe the words, I continued toward Santa Lucina.
Chapter Fourteen
Chloe
My sides ached from the hours of swimming, but I wasn’t about to tell Zeke. Anyone’s muscles would be tired after how long we’d been traveling, which meant it probably had nothing to do with old injuries or the sieranchine. So I wasn’t going to mention it.
Because according to what he’d told me a few miles before, Santa Lucina was only minutes away.
I didn’t know what I’d say to Noah when I saw him again. Or Baylie, either – assuming she hadn’t headed back to Reidsburg already. Noah, at least, knew what I was. For Baylie, the fact I’d disappeared for days on end would require some hefty explanation, even if I did tell her the truth.
And I wasn’t sure about that. I didn’t want to lie to her, but I still couldn’t figure out how to tell someone I’d known my whole life that, oh, by the way, I happen to be a mermaid.
I didn’t want to have that conversation. After days of being surrounded by dehaians, I’d started to feel fairly normal in my new form, but once I was back on land and back in Reidsburg where everyone was human, all that would go away. I’d be a freak again.
A freak who couldn’t be away from the ocean for long without a crazy-making compulsion to return to the water.
There wasn’t any choice, though. The Sylphaen were here. I needed to get away from them.
Even if it meant I’d end up as the only dehaian in over a thousand miles.
My brow furrowed. I couldn’t help that. People had been killed because I was here. So I’d just have to figure it out. Make living away from the sea work for however long it took for the Sylphaen to be stopped. My parents had been nuts about the water, mostly because they thought I’d die if my dehaian side woke, but surely they’d loosen up now that I’d survived changing. Maybe they’d even help me.
And in the meantime, I’d get to see Noah again.
My gaze flicked to Zeke. A pang of discomfort hit me as I tugged my gaze away again.
I wanted to leave. There wasn’t anything to debate.
“So,” I called. “When do we see if the neiphiandine is gone?”
Zeke blinked, as though I was pulling him from his thoughts. “What?”
“The neiphiandine. When should we check if it’s gone?”
He hesitated. “Now’s good, I guess. There’s still a few minutes till we’re in sight of the coast.”
“Okay.”
I swam upward. A heartbeat passed before he followed.
Pale sunrise lit the waves as we came to a stop several yards below the surface, and the current pulled at us, gradually urging us toward the distant shore. I blinked at the glare of the light, my eyes stinging.
“Okay,” Zeke said, watching the water above us. “Just take it slow, eh?”
“What do I do?”
“Well, if the neiphiandine has worn off at all, you should be able to change your lungs and skin enough to handle the air up there. But you shouldn’t need to think about it too much. Your body will know what to do.”
My eyebrow inched up worriedly, but he just swam for the surface. I hesitated, and then followed.
The water rolled above my head, dipping toward me and then rising again as the waves swept along. Several feet higher, Zeke glanced around in the open air, and then motioned for me to come up beside him.
I drew a breath and kicked upward.
My head broke the surface.
Air scorched my skin. The nascent sunrise burned my eyes. I couldn’t breathe.
Gasping, I fell back beneath the waves.
Zeke dove down and caught me.
“No,” I protested, pushing his hands aside. “No, I’m going to do it.”
“The drugs haven’t–”
I shot back upward.
“Chloe!”
Air clogged my lungs, thicker than anything the blindfolds had created. Pain scraped along my skin like a sunburn under sandpaper. I choked, squeezing my eyes shut as I fought to stay above the waves.
My fingers curled into fists as the burning increased. I would change like I needed to. I’d swim back to Santa Lucina and get away from the ocean. I was not going to let this damn drug interfere with what had to happen.
The pain lessened.
I gasped and then coughed at the dense air.
Which grew thinner with every heartbeat.
I opened my eyes. The light glared and then weakened, becoming the ordinary pale glow of sunrise.
A thrilled cry escaped me. I’d done it. I’d beaten the neiphiandine.
“Are you alright?” Zeke asked from a few feet away.
I nodded. “Yeah, I think… I think it’s gone. I–”
A sizzle of pain scraped over my skin and I winced. Breathing hard, I closed my eyes, ordering my skin not to change back again.
“Don’t push too hard,” he warned.
I shook my head, not wanting to hear it. I was going to beat this.
My breathing slowed as the pain faded again. I opened my eyes to find him watching me, worry on his face.
“Chloe, maybe you shouldn’t–”
“Ready to keep going?”
Zeke hesitated. “Yeah,” he answered tightly.
He dove back down.
I stayed where I was for a moment, gulping in air thicker than normal but more breathable than it’d been in days. The wind brushed my skin, its passage still stinging a bit, while in the distance, sunrise brightened the horizon.
A smile tugged at my lips. I sank beneath the water and took off after Zeke.
He didn’t say anything when I pulled alongside him.
“Thanks for your help,” I said after a moment passed.
He nodded.
We continued on. My heart began pounding harder as the water became shallower and the seafloor crept toward us.
“How much farther?” I asked into the silence.
“Almost there.”
Another moment slid by.
“Are we heading for the house?”
“See for yourself,” he offered with a wry look to the surface.
I hesitated at his tone, and then swam up.
We were only about a mile away.
The sun glowed behind the mountains on the horizon. Deep red and gold lit the undersides of the clouds, while the sky brightened to paler gradients of blue with every heartbeat. The beach was cast with shadows from the homes and palm trees around it, and only a few early morning tourists speckled the sand.
But Noah’s house was straight ahead.
I dove back down and pulled up beside Zeke again.
He glanced to me and kept swimming.
“What do you want to do if your friends aren’t home?” he asked neutrally.
“Find somebody with a cell phone and call them, I guess.”
He didn’t respond.
From the corner of my eye, I studied him. I hadn’t listened to him earlier about the neiphiandine, but surely he could see how I’d needed to do that? To try to get over that drug before we reached land?
“Is something wrong?” I asked.
He hesitated just a bit too long. “No.”
For another moment, I watched him. “Okay.”
“Ready?” he asked in the same weird tone.
I nodded.
We swam toward the shore.
Chapter Fifteen
Noah
The sky lightened as the sun crept toward the mountaintops behind me, though deep shadows still engulfed the yard. Seagulls cried overhead, their calls the only other sound besides the waves rushing into shore.
On the edge of the bluffs, I didn’t move. Exhaustion weighed on me. I’d been up half the night, just like most of the other nights before this. In all of their crafting, the old bastards who’d made my kind hadn’t managed to give us the dehaians’ ability to go without sleep, and I was really starting to feel it.
But there was nothing to be done. My cousins may have been dumb as rocks, and between all four of them they only made one brain, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t keep watch in shifts for days on end.
I drew a breath, blinking tiredly in the early morning light. It’d been over five days since Chloe left, and every one of them had been stressful. The moment Chloe’s parents had been cleared by the doctors, they’d fled to Kansas to recover, and hopefully they were doing better than they had been. Baylie had stayed for a night at the hospital, under observation after her run-in with the dehaians and their chloroform. It’d taken a fair bit of convincing for Diane to get her to come back to our house, and I still wasn’t sure it’d been the right decision. Dad thought we needed to talk to her, though, before she went home and told her own father what her stepbrothers really were.
Which might have been a good idea, except for the part where she wouldn’t speak to me or Maddox at all.
And Chloe was missing.
At least, that’s what we’d told the cops after they arrived at the cabin. We said she’d been kidnapped; taken just before Maddox and I had reached the ambulance. We’d claimed Chloe must have stabbed one of them somehow – the closest thing to the truth in our entire story – but that another kidnapper had run off with her after the crash. I’d supposedly rushed away in the car to catch up with the unseen abductors, though of course I’d ultimately failed. Amber Alerts and manhunts were underway now, and the police told us they were doing everything possible to find her.
I really hoped they’d give up soon. They were needed on actual cases, and I hated that we’d had to lie.
Sunlight spread over the water, turning it to rippling gold. In the house behind me, I could feel the cousins moving around, changing shifts yet again.
I stifled a yawn. Maddox would be coming in a few minutes. He’d keep an eye out for her through the rest of the morning, just as he had for all the others since she’d left. He’d hardly said a word about the fact she was dehaian, and didn’t seem to care any more than I did about our grandfather’s stories. Our cousins’ presence grated on him too, and he seemed perfectly happy to make certain they couldn’t get their hands on Chloe.
While I’d just started to hope she didn’t come back.
My stomach twisted. I wanted to see her again. I wanted more than that by far. And I didn’t want to do what my dad had demanded: make sure she never returned here again. But new fears had crept up in the past few days of endless watching in case she arrived. Dad seemed to have no intention of sending my cousins packing anytime soon, and if there was even one minute when Maddox or I weren’t around and those guys saw her first…
They’d tear her apart. They’d fight over her like a pack of hungry wolves. I’d seen them when we were kids, torturing animals they found near their cabin on the Washington coast. Seeing how much pain the creatures could take, at least until my dad came around. Then it was all just accidents and trying to help the poor, brutalized things. A mixture of their father and luck had kept them from expanding their interest to humans over the years, but Richard wouldn’t do a thing about a dehaian.
Not when I suspected he had nearly as wide a sadistic streak as his sons.
So Chloe had to leave. There wasn’t a choice. My father had let the bastards stay, and now nothing here was safe.
I just hoped I’d have time to explain before she needed to go.
Scales and a fin flashed in the sunlight.
I tensed, my heart clenching while my vision sharpened on the spot a mile from shore. A moment passed while the water rippled and rolled, and nothing else appeared to differentiate those waves from any others.
But that’d been a dehaian. I was sure of it. More than that, it was her. I didn’t know why, but I was certain it was her.
And my cousins thought so too.
I could feel them in the guest room, racing for the bedroom door. They’d be downstairs any second, and at the speed I’d heard dehaians could swim, I knew she’d be here soon too.
And then they’d catch her.
They’d finally get a dehaian to kill.
I shoved up from the ground and ran for the stairs.
Chapter Sixteen
Chloe
I knew we had to be getting close to the shore. The seafloor was rising toward us steadily as we swam, and through the waves overhead, the sky was easy to see.
And after so long of intending to come back, I couldn’t keep my heart from racing at the fact we were almost there.
Zeke finally slowed, and so I did as well. His scales and tail vanished as though washed away by the water, becoming swim trunks and legs.
He glanced to me.
I looked back at my tail, willing it to disappear like his had done.
Nothing changed.
Gritting my teeth, I glared at the cream scales that refused to leave.
“Chloe…”
“I can do this.”
Treading water beneath the waves, he looked away.
I drew a sharp breath, returning my focus to my body, imagining my legs coming back and the scales taking the form of a swimsuit like Ina had told me they could.
A shiver ran through me.
The scales melted away. Instinctively, my muscles obeyed new commands as my tail split and my fin vanished into legs and feet. My skin reappeared, interrupted only where cream-toned scales still covered me like a shimmering swimsuit.
I tensed, suddenly frightened I wouldn’t be able to breathe under the water anymore.
“You’re still okay,” Zeke assured me. “Just relax.”
I looked over to him, and carefully pulled in a tiny breath.
It felt like every other one for the past day.
“Changing is like a spectrum,” Zeke explained. “Lots of levels between human and full dehaian form.”
Taking in deeper breaths, I didn’t respond.
“Come on,” he said, that tight tone returning to his voice.
We kept swimming. The seafloor came close enough to touch. My feet sank into the sand and I straightened, rising from the water.
Noah was running toward us across the beach.
A smile broke out across my face and I pushed past the tide to reach him. Atop the bluff, a house door slammed.
He caught my arms as I came close.
And he shoved me back toward the water.
I stumbled and fell into the surf.
“Hey!” Zeke protested, coming toward us.
Noah ignored him. “Get away. Get out of here now.”
I pushed to my feet as he threw a look over his shoulder. “Noah, what–”
“Go, dammit!” he cried as he turned back to me. His eyes met mine, pain-filled disgust twisting his face. “Get the hell away from me, you scaly, scum-sucking fish. Don’t you ever come near here again.”
I froze, speechless.
“I said go!” he yelled, running at me.
Zeke rushed between us. “Back off, asshole!”
Red light flared in Noah’s eyes and fiery cracks raced through his skin. With a snarl, he hurled Zeke back, sending him crashing into the waves thirty feet away.
“Go or die,” Noah growled at me.
Breathless, I stared at him.
And then I spun and dove back into the water.
The ocean enveloped me and the change sizzled through my body. My tail kicked hard, throwing sea foam back at him and propelling me bene
ath the rolling tide.
Zeke raced up to me, spikes on his arms and fury in his eyes. “Are you alright?”
I drew a sharp breath, fighting back tears. I shook my head, not sure what to say.
He took my arm. “Come on,” he said with a dark glance to the shore.
I nodded. With Zeke still holding onto me, I fled back out to sea.
Chapter Seventeen
Noah
The cracks faded from my skin as Chloe vanished into the waves.
Something slammed into me from behind.
Water filled my mouth, followed by sand as I crashed down. A fist like a rock hammered down on my back, and then another sent an explosion of light across my vision when it pounded into my head.
Heat raced through my body. Pain retreated to nothing and adrenaline flooded my veins as every muscle tensed with the overwhelming desire to kill whatever was attacking me.
I never felt so alive as when I let my greliaran side free.
Snarling, I shoved away from the ground and something tumbled from my back. I spun, my heightened vision zeroing in on the nearest thing that had threatened me. The nearest thing I could tear to shreds.
Brock, the youngest of my cousins and the only one close to me in age, scrambled to his feet several yards away. Cracks showed in his skin, with smoke and light pouring from them. Beneath his dark, buzz cut hair, his eyes were red-hot coals. On the beach, his older brothers watched us, unchanged yet, but with rage clear on their faces.
A growl slipped from me.
“You bastard,” Brock spat, the words barely human through his gritted teeth. “That scaly bitch was ours and–”
I slammed into his chest, driving him to the ground, and my fists followed. Blood swirled in the tide rushing past.
One of his brothers grabbed me, hurling me aside. I hit the sand and rolled to my feet.
Wyatt stood beside Brock, who was climbing from the waves with blood dripping from the corner of his mouth despite his defenses. By the bluffs, the middle brothers, Owen and Clay, both watched me.
“Well, come on,” Wyatt taunted. “You little dehaian fucking–”
