Oceanborn

by Amalie Howard

  “I’m going to kill you.”

  “So you keep saying.” He runs the point of the scalpel down the center of my chest. If I could shiver, I would. “But you can’t move, lovely. And you’re going to stay here so I can use as many testing samples as I need to create the perfect specimen.” He taps my breastbone. “And the beauty of my toxin is that you can’t transform, keeping you nice and malleable for my needs.”

  “Lo will come looking for me,” I say through my fear.

  “Lo,” Cano says. “Of course he will, and I am going to drain every drop of blood from his body. He is perfect, you know. The perfect hybrid, master of land and sea.”

  “He’ll die before helping you,” I snap. Bravado is all I have left.

  “I know. But you’re wrong—he won’t die,” he says with a melodramatic sigh. “Young love is so predictable. He’ll offer to trade himself for you, and then I will lock him up, promising your release. Of course, I won’t keep my word because I need you, too, for my research. But he won’t know that.”

  “Sounds like you’ve got it all worked out.”

  “I do.”

  I meet his eyes with a fierce glare. “There’s only one problem. I know you don’t have any more of the toxin prototype left—you used the last on me. Neriah made sure of that, didn’t she?” I’m not entirely sure that Cano doesn’t have any more of the toxin when I say it—after all, he obviously has enough to incapacitate me—but from the furious look on his face, my guess is right.

  “Engineering a new batch as we speak,” he says. “But don’t worry, my sweet, my hybrids are more than capable of dispatching the remnants of your pitiful group.” His smile is evil. “Now that you are no longer queen, no one will come running to your defense. To them, you are nothing but an exile. Now, don’t move while I check on the serum, okay?” Chuckling once more at his own joke, he waltzes, whistling loudly, to the other side of the room.

  Closing my eyes, I focus on the one thing I have left—the fact that my mind is fully functioning. The water in my body is weak, debilitated by the effects of the toxin, but it’s still responsive. With a quiet breath, I try to extract water from the air around me, but it’s as dry as a bone.

  “That’s why it’s so cold in here,” Cano calls out. “I’ve installed special watertight walls and floors, meaning that that’s not going to help you. Plus, we are in the middle of the desert. You can’t glimmer me, Nerissa.”

  This is the moment when the fear becomes almost too much to bear, and I lose faith. If I can’t use the water around me to form a glimmer, then I can’t call Lo or warn anyone. I’m a sitting duck. Soren’s words about being a better live sitting duck than a dead one come back to haunt me, and a hysterical laugh bursts from my lips. Why didn’t I think twice about telling Lo where I was going, or asking Echlios for help, or bringing the vials my mother had hidden? Why didn’t I do something smart, instead of the old jump-first-think-later Nerissa M.O.? I played myself right into Cano’s hands.

  Stop feeling sorry for yourself and think! I have to come up with something that will rattle Cano, something that will throw him off his game so maybe I’ll have a window to use the little energy I have left.

  “What about Cara?” I ask.

  Cano stays silent for so long that I don’t think he has heard me, but then he answers in an unemotional voice, “My niece will learn to understand what I’m doing here. Research is for the greater good of mankind.”

  “The greater good? Is that what you really care about? Let’s be realistic. You only care about yourself. You don’t care if anyone dies, far less your own niece.” Despite Cano’s mounting tension, I keep going, reckless. “You’d murder her in cold blood, wouldn’t you? Good thing her father is back—at least he’s a better father figure than you could ever be. He’s a better principal, too.” When I broke into Cano’s office, I found an article tucked away in a file in the corner of his office. The journalist had called Cano a two-bit hack and described his findings on DNA as pedestrian. “Too bad you’re just mediocre...pedestrian.”

  Cano moves swiftly for a man of his size, slamming his fist down on the side of my metal table so hard that my immobilized body is nearly jerked off. “There are ways to silence you, Nerissa,” he snarls, saliva dripping into my face. “Like cutting out your tongue. Don’t provoke me.”

  “I’m just saying what’s already been said. You’re a hack. You already know it. You said as much just before.”

  Cano grabs me by the hair, scalpel in hand, his face contorted with rage. I take a breath and summon the last bit of energy in my body, slamming a glimmer into him with everything I have left, straight to the center of his brain. He stumbles back, clutching his head with blood pouring out of his nose and ears. For a second, I think I’ve gotten him, but then he stops moving and opens blood-rimmed eyes to stare at me. He’s too strong. With an unblinking stare, he reaches into his lab coat pocket and pulls out a second syringe. This one has liquid in it.

  “Something tells me you’re not worth the trouble,” he says, advancing toward me.

  I close my eyes and picture Lo’s face—those navy eyes, the sharp cheekbones and gracefully winged eyebrows, his wide lips, his smile.

  Lo, I’m so sorry.

  The explosion catches us both by surprise, ripping through the foundation of the building, the smell of smoke acrid in the small room. Cano is thrown to the floor as newfound strength rushes through me. The blast allows air and water from the surrounding ocean to fill my nostrils. We aren’t in the desert. We’re on an island...surrounded by water.

  Water! I inhale a deep, fortifying breath and call the ocean to me. The response is a ferocious surge from the cracked ground beneath us as salt water seeps through cracks, forming rivulets through the air to connect with my body. Desperately, I try to flush out the toxins, feeling the power spread and dissolve into my core as a tingling sensation starts in my toes, rushing up to my knees and my stomach.

  But even in its mild form, the toxin is too potent. My cells fire and deaden within seconds. Cano stands, weaving, and grabs the fallen syringe. He rushes toward me, weapon raised. In a second, I command my skin to harden into Aquarathi scales, watching as the sheen of burnished gold flicker down my body. The needle bends and the tip snaps off. But as with the feeling in my legs, as quickly as the scales appear, they disappear. I can’t fully transform for any useful period of time. My heart stops.

  “More than two ways to skin a cat,” Cano screeches. I gasp as Cano’s thumb and forefinger pry my left eyelid apart, pushing past the protective human covering. Jerking upward in agony, I’m still shackled to the table. I yank so hard on my bonds that I can feel the warm fluid from my body pooling on the table beneath me. With crazed eyes, he throws himself on top of me and grabs hold of the broken syringe in his other hand. “An eye for an eye,” he says, laughing manically.

  The heavy metal door crashes inward off its hinges.

  “Get the hell off her,” Lo shouts. His face is the last thing I see before the syringe sinks into my eye.

  25

  Girlfriends, Grenades and Goodbye

  The pain is excruciating. The sensation of the biotoxin slithering through my skull is nothing like the gentle paralysis I had before. This one makes every single part of me feel like it’s being electrocuted cell by agonizing cell. My back arches, my wrists ripping free of the shackles, and I scream. Golden lights ignite like crazy explosions all over my body, leaving blackened spots along my skin in their wake.

  Someone grabs Cano off me and tosses him into the wall. Out of the corner of my eye, I see him slump down to a motionless pile on the floor. The satisfaction is brief, eclipsed by another wave of blistering pain as my body incinerates from the inside out. The same rotting, burnt odor I smelled from my mother invades my nostrils. Is this what my mother felt the whole time she’d been sitting with me? Sh
e’d seemed so composed through the pain.

  “Nerissa.”

  Lo’s face swims into view. Oh God, he’s so beautiful. I try to capture every part of him in my head, devouring every curve, every line, every hollow. But as fast as I try to hold on to any part of him, it slips away.

  “I—”

  “Hold on.” Lo’s voice comes as if it’s far away, and I want to listen to him, but I can’t.

  He’s fading. I’m fading. I close my eyes as a sharp pinch followed by a cool feeling moving through my veins makes me flinch. But then the sting is gone, and there’s nothing but emptiness. I feel nothing. The arms of the ocean beckon.

  “No,” an indistinct voice says. “Stay with me. Nerissa, wake up. Wake up.”

  Strong arms lift me, cradling me against a warm chest. Hands flutter at my temple, brushing hair away and stroking my cheek. The soft whispers entreating me to stay continue, and then a boy’s mouth is on mine, pressing into my lips, kissing me so sweetly one moment and so demanding the next that I can’t help responding. I moan against his mouth.

  “Kiss me back,” the voice entreats. “Come back to me.”

  Images of a girl and a boy walking on a beach shimmer into two Aquarathi swimming in the darkest, jeweled depths of Waterfell. The boy’s face comes into view, piece by piece, with a shock of silvery-gold blond hair and a pair of intense navy eyes. He’s so familiar, but I can’t quite figure out who he is. My brain won’t cooperate. The boy’s lips curve into a smile that makes a swarm of butterflies take flight in my stomach. My failing mind may not know him, but my body does.

  I know him. I know this boy.

  The boy’s lips descend to mine, and this time I kiss him back, opening my mouth to his and feeling the memories flooding me with each second. My arms lift to wrap around his shoulders, and he crushes me to him, slanting his mouth against mine. Something glowing and glittery extends out of me to sink into him, our essences weaving together as one, and I gasp against his lips. Awakening, I stare into the most beautiful pair of eyes I have ever seen.

  “Welcome back,” Lo says.

  “Whoa,” I whisper. “Now I know how Snow White must have felt when Prince Charming kissed her awake.”

  “Charming has nothing on me,” Lo quips, before dipping his forehead down to meet mine. “You really scared me for a minute,” he says after a beat. “I didn’t know if the serum your mother had hidden was going to work or not.”

  “How’d...you find me?”

  “Group effort,” he says with a nod over his shoulder. “Speio figured it out with the maps you had me send to Echlios, and we tracked you from my beach. Then we spread out and found remnants of the hybrids.” He smiles, kissing me again. “That’s how I knew you were close.”

  “This room...” I say, gesturing to the fractured space. “It was watertight. I tried to call to you, but it wouldn’t work.”

  “I know. I couldn’t even sense you, even when I was on the other side of that door.”

  I frown. “How did you know?”

  “Jenna.”

  “Jenna?” I repeat in disbelief.

  “Call it a sixth sense, call it what you want,” Lo says. “We must have circled the Coronados six times before she insisted that we search on land despite it being illegal to set foot here. Sure enough, we found an abandoned military bunker that once again Jenna insisted we search. She blew up the door, and there you were.”

  “Wait, what? She blew up a door?” A vague memory of an explosion comes to mind.

  “Grenades,” Jenna says as she walks into the room and hugs me so hard that I wince. “Found them in a crate down in the back. You should see some of the heavy artillery down there—missile launchers, automatic weapons, the works.”

  “And you just used them?” I ask wide-eyed. “You could have blown yourself up or something.”

  “Got the door open, didn’t it?” She throws her hands on her hips. “Hey, we are dealing with some seriously ugly business here, like hybrids who can’t be killed with guns, Taser guns or any normal weapon. I didn’t know what was behind this door, so I had to get creative. And it saved you, so I wouldn’t be complaining.”

  “Not complaining,” I say, shaking my head. “Just kind of freaked out right now that you literally just used a grenade that could have been a hundred years old. You could have taken your hand off!”

  Jenna rolls her eyes. “It’s a Mexican military base that Cano somehow got permission to use. I’m pretty sure that it’s not that old. Anyway, I was careful. I watched a video on YouTube on my phone before I pulled the pin.”

  “You watched a video?” I splutter and turn to Lo. “You let her watch a video and use a grenade?”

  He shrugs. “It’s Jenna,” he says, as if that magically explains it all, and then adds, “She had a grenade in her hand. You think I’m going to tell her what she can or can’t do? No, thanks.”

  “I cannot believe the two of you.”

  “You are seriously going to give yourself a heart attack, undermining all our efforts to save you,” Jenna says with a grin. “Now let’s get out of here. Echlios is waiting outside with the boat in case you don’t feel like swimming.”

  With Lo’s help, I hook my legs over the side of the table, and then loop my arms around his shoulders. He scoops me up like I weigh nothing.

  “What about him?” Jenna says with a glance at Cano’s still motionless body. “Is he dead?”

  “Hang on a sec,” Lo says, helping me stand on woozy feet before crouching down over Cano. “I’ll check.” He places two fingers against Cano’s neck, looking for a pulse, and nods to Jenna. “He’s alive but out cold. What do we do with him?”

  “Turn him in to the FBI,” Jenna suggests. “He’s still on their most wanted list.”

  “Sounds like a plan to me,” Lo says, walking back to pick me up. “Let’s get the hell out of here. This place gives me the creeps.”

  An enraged yell pierces the room, and suddenly it’s like everything is moving in slow motion. Cano is no longer on the floor, but has managed to grab Jenna in a reverse headlock. His eyes are clear and lucid, as if he’s been biding his time all along and waiting for the right moment to attack.

  “I knew I should have brought a second grenade,” Jenna mutters, gasping against Cano’s beefy arm jammed up against her throat.

  “Don’t worry,” I say, sliding down Lo’s body until I’m in a standing position. I squash a wave of nausea at the sudden vertigo. “He won’t hurt you. Right, Cano? You told me you needed me. So let’s trade—me for her.”

  “Nerissa, no,” Lo says swiftly. I glare him into silence.

  “And him?” Cano asks.

  “You’ll have to get Lo another time. Right now you have one thing to trade and I’m offering up myself. Release her and Lo takes her to safety. Take it or leave it.”

  “What about your people outside?” he says, having clearly eavesdropped on our conversation.

  “They leave, too.”

  “Why should I trust you?”

  I swallow, fighting the urge to close my eyes and lean against Lo. I don’t want to appear weak to Cano. “Because you really have no other option to walk out of here alive, and you know it. Me for Jenna, and that’s the last time I’ll ask you.”

  I can see the wheels ticking over in his head, weighing the possibilities. It almost looks like he’s about to give in when an ugly wide grin spreads across his face. He nods to someone at the broken entryway, and a person steps through it—no, not a person—a hybrid with electric-blue scales.

  “Thanks for the offer,” Cano says. “But I’ll just take you both now.”

  Shouts from outside the bunker make my blood run cold. “Holy shit! Where’re they coming from? There’s too many of them.” I recognize Carden’s voice and then I hear Echlios bellow
a series of commands to get in defensive formation.

  Cano laughs. “Their odds of survival are slim. It’s ten-to-one out there. They can’t win against my hybrids, and neither will you. You should have killed me when you had the chance, and now you’ll pay the price.” He glances down at Jenna. “I think I’ll kill this one first.” But before he can do anything, Jenna flings her head back to connect with the bridge of his nose and jams her elbow into his side. Cano howls in pain, releasing his hold. Jenna skids to the floor and scrambles to where Lo and I are standing.

  I raise my chin, glaring at Cano. “Sounds like great odds to me. I killed five of your hybrids single-handedly. What do you think trained Aquarathi guards are going to do to them?”

  He snarls and rushes me just as Blue Scales darts toward Lo. Pushing Jenna out of the way under the metal table I’d been lying on, I face Cano head-on, taking the hit on my shoulder. The collision makes me see stars. I haven’t yet fully recovered and my reflexes aren’t quite what they should be. Cano gets in a second hit to my stomach that thumps the breath out of me. He comes at me again and I brace for impact. But the blow doesn’t fall. Instead Cano backs away as six surgical instruments come flying across the room like darts, impaling him in the arm and clipping his ear. Jenna winks, a tray following the route of the scalpels, which hits Cano square in the head, and he goes down like a sack of potatoes.

  Meanwhile, Lo and Blue are locked in a fierce wrestling match, and moving so quickly I can hardly figure out who is who. Lo seems to have the upper hand, though, so I turn my attention back to a maddened Cano. We circle each other cautiously just as Lo and Blue go flying through a wall of glass to crash through to the other side. I watch triumphantly as Lo pummels Blue’s face until blood makes his blue scales turn black, and when Lo hits him for the last time, Blue doesn’t get up.