Oceanborn

by Amalie Howard

  “I saw Lo. People brought him here. I couldn’t look the other way.”

  “You could have called me.”

  “On what? Seashells?” she whispers drily. “You lost your phone, remember?”

  I eye her up and down. “You’ve been here all night?”

  She nods. “They only just left. No sign of Cano, but there are some seriously scary-looking dudes going in and out of this house. They took Lo in there.” She eyes me meaningfully over the top of Sawyer’s head, mouthing the word hybrids.

  Shit, and Cara’s still inside. I don’t even know how I’m going to explain that one to Jenna. “Is he still in there?”

  “Didn’t see him leave. I’ve been camped out on the beach behind those rocks all morning.”

  “I still don’t get why Lo came all the way here for closure,” Sawyer says.

  Jenna’s eyebrows shoot into her hairline and I shake my head. “I’ll explain later. Right now we have to get in there and deal with two things. Lo and—” I exhale a loud breath “—Cara.”

  “Cara?” Jenna swivels toward me. “Did I hear you right, or did you just stutter?”

  “Nope, you heard me right,” I say. “Cara came with us. She was actually pretty helpful in finding this address, once we got past all the niceties of why I needed her help and why she should give it.”

  “What’d you tell her?” Jenna asks in a low voice.

  I shrug. “Nothing she didn’t already know.”

  “The truth,” Sawyer interjects. “Which you guys should have told me earlier. What? Didn’t I qualify to be in your little superspy club? A dude deserves to know that the principal of his school is a homicidal DNA-splicing maniac, and that his girlfriend is Nancy Drew with a death wish.”

  “Who’s Nancy Drew?” I blurt out.

  “She’s a fictional...never mind,” Jenna says. “Come on, this way. Let’s go find Lo and Cara—which I still can’t get over by the way—before those goons come back.” We follow her around the side of the house to a sliding patio door that’s also unlocked, but before she opens it, I lay a hand on her arm.

  “Wait one second,” I say, and close my eyes. Pulling the water toward my center, I form a glimmer and extend it outward like a net, letting it rest on the surfaces inside the house. The scent of something bitter and foreign permeates it, almost making me recoil backward. Now that I’ve learned to identify the hybrid essence, the feel of it is like a hundred reptiles slithering across my skin. It’s thick and cloying, everywhere my glimmer touches. But there’s something familiar, too, underneath it all. A hint of another essence I instantly recognize. Lo.

  “Lo’s definitely in there,” I whisper, snapping the glimmer back into my body. “But he’s weak. I can barely feel him.”

  “Anyone else?” Jenna says.

  “Not that I could tell,” I say. Sawyer’s staring at me like I’ve grown two horns on my head, which I know I haven’t. At least not right now. I roll my eyes. “Seriously, for a Zen surfer, haven’t you ever heard of meditation before battle? Sharpening your senses?” Jenna smothers a giggle as Sawyer nods, surprisingly easy to convince.

  We let ourselves into the house like silent ghosts. There’s no sign of Cara or anyone else on the first floor. The coffeemaker light is still on in the kitchen, I notice, and there’s a box of half-eaten pastries on the table. Jenna puts a hand to her lips and points to a wide set of stairs leading up, then gestures to herself. I shake my head. We all stick together. I’m not going to risk losing anyone else.

  We take the stairs two at a time. All the rooms upstairs are open, with the exception of one at the far end. My heart stops as I turn the handle and crack open the door, only to see a girl’s body lying draped across the bed.

  “Is that Cara?” Jenna says at my ear, making my heart leap into my throat. “Is she—”

  “She’s asleep,” I say. “Sawyer, you need to stay with her. If she wakes up, take her out to the car.”

  “But what about you two—” he begins, and then stops at the freezing look on Jenna’s face. “Be careful, babe.”

  I bite back a snort, even though I’d probably quail before that look, too. “Basement,” I tell Jenna on the way down. “Quickly. Someone knows we’re here.”

  “Cano?”

  “I don’t know. There are too many scents, essences. It’s confusing. Just keep your eyes open. We’re here for Lo, and that’s it. I’ll go first. You follow.”

  The thick metal door leading to Cano’s industrial lab is open, and we have no choice. It’s the only room we haven’t checked. We pad downstairs on silent footsteps, and I stop so quickly that Jenna crashes into my back. The room is a replica of the lab that had been in Cano’s Sierra house in Rancho Santa Fe, all metal floors and tables with huge black electronic cables coiling along the floor like fat pythons. Flat-screened televisions dominate the walls. Some are on with various news channels; others display previous recordings of experiments. I force myself not to watch and hope Jenna does the same.

  A row of indented cages of varying sizes frame the far end of the room. They aren’t empty. Glowing red eyes peek out from one of them near the center, the creature making a high-pitched whining noise. A shadowy, hulking figure sits in another, while something that looks like a half jaguar, half monkey paces in the other. A thinner cage on the far right houses a flock of birdlike animals with bristly fur and shiny scales. They eye Jenna and me with vicious and calculating intelligence. I fight back a shiver.

  “What the f—” Jenna breathes.

  “Chimeras.” I nod to the doors on the far right of the room. “Over there.” I can feel Lo’s pull, drawing me toward one of the doors, that same tug connecting to the core of my center. “He’s in there.”

  I open the door and gasp, my heart shrinking to the size of a pea. Lo’s sitting on a metal chair, his arms shackled to the armrests. Thin white tubes connected to long silver vials are plugged into the ragged flesh at his wrists. His shirt is torn and gaping open. Blood dampens his hairline, making his sandy hair seem almost black, and is congealed on his neck in clawlike lines. His bare feet are bloody and dirty, caked with an oily bluish fluid. And his eyes are wild. Unseeing.

  I sink to my knees beside him. “Help me untie him, Jenna.”

  “Riss, he doesn’t look good,” she says slowly. “Maybe it’s not safe. We don’t know...if the Lo we know is still in there.” Sure enough, as she nears the other side of the chair, Lo bares his teeth at her, navy-and-gold lights flickering like the Fourth of July along his bare forearms. The greenish-gold tattoos just visible beneath his open shirt writhe like snakes inking his skin.

  “I don’t care,” I say desperately, working one hand free and trying to figure out how to remove the IVs without hurting him. “I can’t just leave him like this. We have to help him.”

  “You can’t help him,” a voice behind us says. “At least not without this.”

  I whirl around, and my eyes narrow at the woman leaning casually against the doorway with a heavy metal syringe in one hand. My mother looks the same as she did when I summoned her, with long blond hair and shimmering Aquarathi eyes. Beautiful, cold and unreachable. And she has something I want, something I desperately need. I eye the syringe in her fingers—Lo’s cure.

  “Did you hurt Cara?” I say, dragging my eyes away and making my voice inflectionless.

  “Just a mild concoction,” she answers. “She’ll be fine. I didn’t expect to see her, of all people.”

  “Well, you know what they say about keeping your enemies close and all that. What are you doing with Lo? What are all these tubes for?”

  “He is the perfect hybrid specimen. Cano wanted to replicate his DNA. Reproduce it.”

  I eye her. “Speaking of, where is Cano?”

  “Out, I expect.”

  “So why the biotox
in? You could have just taken his blood.”

  Neriah walks into the room, every inch of her still imperious royalty. I stand my ground until we are inches apart before she sways past me with a faint smile at my standoff. She ignores Jenna, who is standing still against the far wall, and brushes a lazy hand across Lo’s matted hair. “I told you. Weaken the human side, undermine the Aquarathi side. We wanted to test if your bond could be broken.”

  “Why? You put us together. It was Ehmora’s elaborate trick that made us bond in the first place.”

  “You’re wrong, my darling,” she says. “That was my idea.” She’s so calm and condescending that all I want to do is rip her face to shreds, make her feel something for once. A thread in her voice catches, making me look at her. “But things change. Players change, and plans change. Enemies and all that,” she says cryptically, mocking my earlier words.

  “Are you going to kill us?”

  “If I have to.” She rakes Jenna with a contemptuous glance. “I see you’ve brought your human pet.” I bristle and she laughs, reading me easily. “The one thing about you, Nerissa, is that you are so predictable. You have to think outside of the box. Be fearless. Formidable.”

  “She is fearless,” Jenna bursts out, and blanches as the weight of my mother’s terrifying eyes falls on her.

  “Ah, the mouse speaks.”

  “Don’t speak to her like that,” I growl. “Don’t even look at her. She has more courage in her little finger than any of you traitors—” I spit the word like a barb “—have in your whole body.” I take a breath. “Now give me that syringe before I take it from you. I don’t need a Taser gun to take you down this time. That must have hurt.” I offer a consolatory smile.

  “There’s the fire I was talking about,” my mother crows. “Well, you’d better work fast because your young prince is running out of time.”

  I glance at Lo. He does look paler than when we first entered the room. “You’re going to let him die?”

  “Why do you care? You’re stronger without him.”

  I shake my head, a maniacal laugh erupting from my mouth. “Is that what you think? That he makes me weak? Well, he doesn’t. He makes me better—a better friend, a better leader, a better everything. You once told me that love doesn’t matter. That’s because you never understood it. You’ve never experienced it. This bond? It’s nothing compared to what the humans choose to give each other every single day.” I smile softly. “Don’t you see? That’s where you’re wrong. I’d give up everything for him.”

  “Then that makes you a fool.” My mother’s face is a blank slate, giving away nothing as we stare at each other in frigid silence. “So you would choose him despite what he is? If you weren’t bonded?”

  “Yes.” I swallow hard. I would choose Lo again, no matter the cost. “I would.”

  She eyes me, her eyes unfathomable. “So be it.”

  I hesitate, not understanding her words or the expression on her face. And then I feel it—the thread of a glimmer weaving its way toward me, winding its way through my blood like honey...like an old, cherished memory, familiar and beautiful. My father’s glimmer.

  Fight, Nerissa.

  “Jenna, get out of the way and get down,” I snarl. My body starts transforming before the glimmer can recede, my nails sharpening into claws at the ends of my human fingers, and my teeth to fangs. My mother bares razor-sharp incisors of her own and deflects my strike. Lunging toward me, she punches me in the face and I feel a hot trickle of blood wet my upper lip. Enraged, I swipe at her chest, feeling my nails dig into soft human flesh, and rake ruthlessly downward. Power swirls through me like a mad thing, uncontrollable and punishing. I hit her again, this time in the stomach, ripping through skin like paper. She gasps, staggering backward. Rage blinds me and the scent of blood fills my nostrils. I push forward, not losing any ground, and continue my assault with blow after blow to her shoulders and back until she’s on the floor and I’m on top of her like a dark and ruthless avenging angel.

  “Nerissa, stop!” Jenna’s voice pierces through my haze of fury, and my mother’s bloodied, nearly pulverized human face swims into focus. Her bones are like putty beneath my hands.

  Well done....

  The echo disappears as quickly as it had come, and for a moment, I think I’ve imagined it. That, and the pride surrounding the words. I haul myself off her battered body and grab the syringe out of her hand. It was almost too easy to get it...almost as if she’d wanted me to get it. I shrug off the strange thoughts. Adrenaline is making me crazy. I raise the syringe and growl. It’s empty.

  “Where’s the serum, Neriah?”

  For a second, I think she isn’t going to answer me, and then her lips part on a pained exhale. “F-fridge,” she breathes, a bubble of blood foaming at the corner of her lips, and closes her eyes.

  Jenna scoots over to the refrigerator and gnashes her teeth. “It’s locked,” she says. “What’s the combination?”

  I shake Neriah, but her eyes remain closed. I slap her on one cheek. “What’s the number? Dammit, wake up.” I spare a desperate glance toward Lo, who is now slumped over in the chair, held in place by the one hand still tied to the armrest. “What’s the number? Neriah, what’s the number? Mom, please.” Her eyelashes flutter against her cheeks and her lips move, but no sound comes out of them. I take a breath, ready to plunge into her mind and extract the information forcibly.

  Seven, four, one, six, three. Her glimmer is faint, but seeps into me as clear as a bell. I repeat the numbers to Jenna and the fridge pops open. Bottles clink and crash into each other as Jenna sweeps her hand inside. Silver color. BT4.

  “That one,” I tell Jenna. “The silver one on the left.” She tosses it to me, and I dunk the syringe into the plastic stopper. “Help me get him loose, and careful with those tubes. We have to get out of here.”

  Gently disengaging him and hoisting Lo’s limp body over my shoulder, we make our way out of the shattered room, leaving my mother’s prone body behind.

  “What about her?” Jenna says.

  “We Aquarathi heal up nicely,” I say in a dead voice, despite the trembling unfurling in the pit of my belly. “She recovered from slicing off her own crown and sending it to me. She’ll survive this, too. She always does.”

  We run past the beasts in the other room, ignoring the mad cacophony of shrieking, and pound up the stairs, Jenna shouting for Sawyer above the noise. He meets us in the living room with a woozy Cara slung over his own shoulder, and stares at me.

  “What was all that banging? And all that screeching? It sounded like a zoo down there. Is that Lo?” He frowns. “You’re strong for a girl. He’s not a small dude.”

  “Time and place, Sawyer,” I snap. “Get the car, and get Jenna and Cara back to La Jolla to Echlios now.”

  “Wait,” Jenna pants. “What about you two?”

  “We’ll be right behind you. I just have to take care of one thing first.”

  Jenna turns toward me, her eyes wary. “You sure?”

  “I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life. Now go.”

  Watching to make sure they drive off, I half carry, half drag Lo down to the water’s edge, syringe still in hand, until we’re waist-deep in the ocean. The noon sun is high in the sky, making lights glitter off the tops of the foamy waves. I can already feel the salt water rejuvenating my body, and can only hope it’s doing the same for him. Lo is barely breathing now. Whatever they’ve done has taken a lot out of him. It’s almost as if they’ve drained everything from him.

  “Hold on,” I say, and gently stick the needle into his neck, releasing the plunger. “Please work. Please work.” Lo’s body starts to convulse as the serum enters his bloodstream, halting the biotoxin in its tracks. I hope. I hold him to me with all my strength and whisper against his temple that he’s going to be all righ
t, even though I know he can’t hear me.

  A loud crash and a terrifying bellow make me look up at the house. A chair crashes through the patio door, followed by a huge, hulking figure. I squint in the bright light, but the thick curly hair and beefy stature are the same. Cano’s back—we got out just in time. The blood in my veins turns to ice as the sun glints off something on his face. Scales. Now I know what Cano has been doing with Lo’s blood.

  I drag Lo’s still-bucking body into deeper waters, but not before Cano sees us. A cry of hideous rage echoes across the sands as he charges toward the ocean. There’s only one place we can go—out and down where Cano can’t follow. But first Lo has to transform, and I’m not sure he’s ready for that. I glance at Cano closing the distance between us rapidly. Then again, we don’t have much choice.

  “Lo, open your eyes.” Drawing us out into the open ocean and kicking my legs to keep us afloat, I press my lips to his cold ones, willing him to see me, willing him to know me...to come back to me. Opening the conduit between us, I engage Sanctum, pushing my energy into his body and feeling him absorb it like a sponge. “I’m here. Listen to my voice. Find me.”

  Slanting my open mouth against his in a desperate kiss, I bite his lip harder than I intended. His lashes flutter open, and his navy eyes meet mine just before he crushes his mouth against me in an almost violent response. As much as I want to lose myself in the fierce sweetness of him, I wrench away.

  “Are you okay?” I ask, breathless.

  “I think so.”

  “Do you know who you are?” I ask, staring at him, unsure. “What you are?”

  “Riss, what’s going on? Of course I know who and what I am.” He winces. “Why does my head feel like it got sledgehammered by a bunch of drunken gremlins?”

  “It kind of did, only not gremlins. Hybrids. There’s one now.” I clutch his shoulders. Cano is about thirty feet away and swimming strongly. “We have to go. Can you...shift?”

  Lo looks over my shoulder, his eyes widening. “Is that Cano?”