Through Fire & Sea

by Nicole Luiken

  “I know you want to be normal, but you’re a siren, the son of the ocean. Stop hiding behind your rules and use the talent you were given. Or we’ll both die,” she said starkly.

  Ryan swore. “I won’t let you drown.” He molded her against his chest, effortlessly keeping them afloat. “All you have to do is hang on.”

  She obeyed, wrapping her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist. Unwilling to watch the wave come any closer, she fixed her eyes on Ryan’s face. “I love you.”

  She couldn’t be sure if he heard her, but he kissed her, a hard stamp, then advised, “Breathe deep. Oxygenate your lungs. When I count to three, hold your breath. One.” His muscles tensed. “Two. Three.”

  Holly inhaled. Held.

  Graceful as a dolphin, Ryan dived under the enormous wave.

  The water folded over them like a malicious hand and would have slammed them into the bottom of the channel and crushed them, if not for Ryan’s powerful tail. Eyes closed, Holly clung to his chest so he could use both arms.

  The wave rolled them over and sucked them down. Holly felt like a doll in a washing machine. Ryan’s arms stroked, four, five, six times, and still the ocean kept them in his cruel grip.

  She could taste the sea god’s wrath like blood in the water. He wanted to drown his son’s killer. Drown the whole world.

  …

  In the parking lot across the road from the marina, Qeturah trailed her hand along a car window and split into three people. Illusion.

  Leah faltered at the edge of the roadway. Which one was the true Qeturah? Illusions Called from glass ought to have been airy and insubstantial; Qeturah must have drained another power ring to make two so solid. The illusions would probably only last a few minutes, but if Leah chose wrong, Qeturah would escape.

  Left Qeturah’s cloth-of-gold dress gleamed in the streetlights as she veered out of the parking lot toward the cooled lava road. Middle Qeturah ran straight down the long row of cars. Her gold shoes with their absurd heel flashed. Right Qeturah fumbled with the door of a yellow car. Her sequined purse swung from her right hand.

  Leah focused on the purse. Middle and Left Qeturah held their purses in their left hands. The illusions were mirror images. So Right Qeturah was the true Qeturah.

  Leah dashed across the street as Qeturah climbed behind the wheel.

  Qeturah’s lips peeled back in a vicious smile. She gunned the motor. The car surged backward, tail end swinging toward Leah then changing direction.

  Leah gave chase. If the car reached the street, Qeturah would escape. Again. An unbearable possibility.

  The car slowed at end of the row, turning. Putting on a burst of speed, Leah laid her hand on the windshield before the car tore away, leaving behind the scent of burned rubber.

  She cradled her stinging hand against her chest, watching, waiting…

  The yellow car accelerated toward the lot’s exit—then the red lights flashed on. Tires squealed to a stop.

  Leah’s lips curved in a vicious smile of her own.

  She’d enhanced the faint reflection of night sky and street lamps, in effect painting the windshield black.

  Leah hurried forward only to jump to the side when Qeturah reversed the car.

  Ashes! Leah took refuge between two cars. Qeturah nosed the yellow car into a slot, then backed out so that her rear window faced the direction she wanted to travel.

  Qeturah was still trying to escape. She didn’t understand yet that neither of them was leaving this world alive.

  The car moved more slowly in reverse. Leah caught up before Qeturah turned out of the parking lot onto the two-lane road. One touch blackened the rear window, too. A second did the same to the driver’s side window.

  Qeturah powered down her window. “Truce. I don’t have time to fight you. Fix the windows, and I’ll take you to an obsidian mirror so you can return to Fire. The Ocean Lord is awakening and—”

  Leah laughed, low and unpleasant. “He’s already awake. And very angry.” Over the ringing in her ears, she could hear the ocean pouring over the channel, roaring toward them. Her heart filled with fierce joy.

  Qeturah looked, and fear aged her face a decade.

  Leah took advantage of her distraction to reach in through the open window and disengage the lock. She jerked open the car door. “You’re going to stay here and take your punishment.”

  Qeturah pulled back. “You’ll die, too.”

  “Happily—as long as I take you with me.” Leah wrenched the door open.

  Qeturah stared at her, lips parted in shock. “You mean that. You’re insane.” Abruptly, she attacked.

  Her weight hit Leah; they fell together to the unforgiving cooled lava surface. Leah dodged a punch to the eye. “You’re the mad one, not me,” Leah panted, rolling so that she was on top. Qeturah didn’t understand—couldn’t understand—any motive that went beyond self-interest, because she was incapable of love.

  She’d told Leah once that only True Worlders were real, but Leah suspected Qeturah didn’t think anyone was real except herself.

  Leah ignored a vicious scratch across her cheekbone and pinned Qeturah’s hands.

  The wave devoured the row of buildings across the road.

  Not long now.

  …

  Darkness. Water.

  Holly’s lungs burned, and the dissonance ricocheted in her skull. Deprived of oxygen, her grip weakened. The current gleefully ripped her from Ryan. The wildly frothing water carried her away like a leaf down a storm gutter.

  “Holly!” Ryan’s voice was distorted by the water.

  He was too far away, and the undertow bore her down, down, down.

  “No!” Ryan’s siren voice cut through the water like an ax. “Give her back!”

  The water shivered around her, queerly alive, and then an immense voice rumbled, “Who asks?”

  Ryan didn’t hesitate. “Your son.”

  He’d stepped off the straight path for her. More clearly than words, the act told Holly that Ryan loved her. Sweetness flooded her just before she blacked out.

  …

  “Your nose is bleeding.”

  “What?” Leah licked her upper lip and tasted blood. Her attention remained on the rising floodwaters, now pouring across the road, every bit as destructive as lava, but faster moving.

  “It’s the dissonance,” Qeturah explained. “You’re on the same world as your otherself, and the universe knows it’s wrong. It’s trying to correct the problem by killing you both.”

  So Holly still lived. Leah had assumed—

  Qeturah slammed her forehead into Leah’s face. More blood gushed from her nose, and tears of pain poured from her eyes.

  Qeturah wrestled free and jumped back in the car. The motor was still running, and it leaped forward like a trained steed. The door swung shut, nearly taking Leah’s hand off.

  The tsunami hit.

  Waist-high waters swept Leah off her feet and closed over her head. The current pinned her against a white van, and she fought her way upright.

  Leah glimpsed the yellow car bobbing in the flood, Qeturah pounding the steering wheel in frustration—and then the dark waters ripped her away and spun her into a black car. The whole parking lot was afloat, cars colliding as the current pushed them along the same path.

  Leah scrambled onto a car roof. Panting, she clung to the top as it wallowed in the flood.

  She ground her teeth when she saw that Qeturah, too, had gained the dubious safety of a roof. Her annoyance turned to alarm when Qeturah bent over the metal roof, speaking to her reflection.

  Or rather, not her reflection, because she said, “Malachi, my apologies for contacting you directly. I know you’re being watched, but I need an immediate extraction.” She listened for a moment, then snapped, “Dunne proved incompetent. I woke the Water Elemental just as I said I would. I can do the same to other worlds. Now fulfill your promise!”

  “No,” Leah said thickly, through her clogged nose. “N
o. I won’t let you get away.”

  If the Ocean Lord wasn’t going to kill Qeturah, Leah would do it herself. A three-foot-long spear of wood floated beside her car. It seemed like destiny, so she fished it out. A second look showed dozens of wooden splinters—wreckage—polluting the water, but it didn’t really matter how the weapon had come into her hand, only that she had it.

  Leah hefted the makeshift spear and imagined plunging it into Qeturah’s chest.

  The black car obliged, drifting closer, but Leah’s body didn’t want to cooperate. Blood trickled from her nose. She gripped the spear as hard as she could, but her fingers tingled, going numb. Dissonance and pain all but blinded her as she balanced herself on the roof’s wobbly surface.

  Only five feet of swirling water separated them now. Leah prepared to leap, even as her vision grayed around the edges.

  The nose of Leah’s car bumped into Qeturah’s. As the frame shuddered and tilted, Leah stood up.

  A man’s hand emerged from the shiny rooftop.

  Qeturah hesitated, as if not sure she trusted the person on the other side.

  Leah jumped. She landed hard on the yellow car’s trunk. Her weight made it bobble and sink.

  Qeturah snarled at Leah and grasped the disembodied fingers.

  Howling with grief and rage, Leah threw herself forward as the hand pulled Qeturah into the mirror, headfirst. The roof shimmered as if outlined in gold.

  “No!” Leah plunged the spear down on Qeturah’s back even as her own feet slipped sideways. The shock of impact traveled up the length of wood, and then the mirror swallowed Qeturah up.

  Leah didn’t think. Enraged, she scrambled, slid, jumped in after Qeturah.

  …

  “Breathe,” Ryan ordered.

  Holly obeyed helplessly, but violent coughing spasms racked her body. Ryan held her head above the water as her lungs fought to clear themselves.

  “Are you hurt?” he asked anxiously. “Your nose was bleeding.”

  She shook her head and winced. “Just a headache,” she rasped, her throat raw. The ringing in her ears had fallen silent. Leah must have finally left. Fat lot of good she’d done—

  Unless she hadn’t left. Unless she’d died in the tsunami. Oh God. Holly’s stomach lurched. Her dad, all those people… She clutched Ryan’s shoulder and looked around. They floated in the middle of the channel. Though still higher than normal, the seawater no longer overflowed its banks. On either side of them, the water flowed back out to the ocean, but the gentlest of currents bore them toward the marina.

  “What happened?” she asked, dreading.

  “I don’t know. I asked him—my father—to spare the people. He took back most of the force of the tsunami, and there won’t be a second wave, but…” Ryan trailed off, looking sick.

  But by then it might have been too late.

  They waited in an agony of suspense as the current swept them around the corner into the marina—and saw devastation on a scale Holly couldn’t have imagined.

  At first glance, all the boats were simply gone. Destroyed. Then her eye picked out more details. Debris in the water. Boats smashed to matchsticks against the piers and each other. Fiberglass hulls floating belly up, broken masts, boats tipped drunkenly on their sides… Cars had been swept off piers and were sinking, pulled nose down by the weight of their engines.

  Only half the streetlights still functioned, but she could see that the devastation extended past the edges of the marina. Boats were shipwrecked on city streets, buildings sat askew on their foundations, cars were hung up on top of one another. Sirens wailed in the distance.

  Holly buried her face against Ryan’s neck, not wanting to see any more.

  “Look over there!” Ryan said urgently.

  He pointed at the 150-foot party yacht. The tsunami had pushed it farther down the channel, but it hadn’t tipped and was still afloat, spared by Ryan’s father.

  …

  Falling—

  —pushing through a wall of cold white mist—

  —but her otherself wasn’t there to extend a hand, and a door slammed in Leah’s face, shunting her aside—

  —she tumbled onto the stone floor of the Mirrorhall.

  Her ears stopped ringing. She looked around in the sudden deafening silence. Whatever world Qeturah had traveled to, it wasn’t Fire.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Gold or Glass

  People cheered as crewmen pulled Holly and Ryan onboard the yacht and wrapped them in blankets, but Holly had eyes only for her dad. He pushed through the crowd, his face white.

  She braced herself for him to yell at her, but instead his arms closed around her in a tight hug. She squeezed him back. Relief swelled her throat. Everyone she loved was safe.

  She could feel his body shaking, and she vowed to remember this moment the next time he was an idiot.

  Over her head, he profusely thanked Ryan for keeping her safe.

  “We saved each other,” Ryan said, distracted. “Where’s Nimue?”

  Her father briefly closed his eyes. “She’s not onboard. She wasn’t with you?”

  Ryan shook his head. His expression pierced Holly’s heart: fear and pain with a black seed of relief. If Nimue was dead, he wouldn’t have to deal with her attempt to murder him.

  …

  Ryan folded the pearl necklace into her hand.

  Holly looked up in alarm from her seat on the stairs.

  “I’m going to help search and rescue. There will be people in the water.” His eyes begged her to understand.

  Her protest died on her lips. As a merman he could hold his breath longer and search places that would otherwise have to wait for divers. And he would have his father’s help finding people—both those alive and dead.

  Bodies, one of which might be his mother’s. She nodded to show she understood.

  …

  At dawn, Holly kissed the pearl and dipped it in the lapping waves of the marina. “Send Ryan back to me.”

  Five minutes later, Ryan swam up, his eyes blank with despair. He changed form and pulled himself out of the water. She bundled him into a blanket.

  She didn’t ask, but he answered anyway. “I couldn’t find her.” Pause. “I asked my father to wash all the bodies ashore.”

  “You did all you could,” Holly told him. “Let’s get you home.”

  …

  The house lay silent, empty.

  Holly closed her eyes, trying to disguise her relief. She’d feared Qeturah would be there, waiting. A shudder went through Ryan, and her father looked as if he’d taken a blow to the chest.

  Neither wanted to sleep, but Holly cajoled both of them to take a shower and get changed. While they were occupied, she slipped up to her private bathroom and Called Leah. She had to know.

  …

  (I need to talk to you. come on, Leah, look in the mirror.)

  Dry-eyed, Leah stared at the rock ceiling a foot above her pallet. She’d rather swallow her own tongue than talk to a grief-stricken Holly, but her Water self had a right to know what had happened, so she dragged herself upstairs to the Four Worlds mirror.

  She bowed her head for a moment, then forced herself to meet Holly’s gaze in the ice mirror.

  (what happened? where’s Qeturah?)

  “She escaped.” Leah’s voice felt as heavy as lead. “Her teacher from the True World opened a portal. I stabbed her, but she’s probably healed by now.” From Qeturah’s hints, the True World had both advanced magic and technology to rival Water.

  (do you think she’ll come back?)

  Leah shrugged listlessly. “Why? She accomplished her goal and roused the ocean. He’ll shatter your world for the death of his son.”

  (but Ryan’s not dead.)

  Leah stopped breathing, afraid to hope. “But—I saw Qeturah throw his body into the water.”

  (he was just unconscious. I kept him afloat.)

  Holly kept talking, relating what had happened to her and Ryan during the tsuna
mi, but Leah didn’t hear over the rush of blood through her ears.

  She hadn’t failed. Ryan lived, and so long as he did, at least one part of Gideon also survived.

  Long-denied tears flowed down her cheeks.

  …

  After supper, Holly finally persuaded Ryan and her dad to stop watching rehashed news coverage of the Marina del Rey disaster and go to bed.

  Pushing aside her own exhaustion, she sneaked outside and broke into Qeturah’s office. She couldn’t do much for Ryan’s grief, but she was determined to free her dad from the spell.

  After disarming the bulldog illusion, she went straight to the second room and opened the third drawer, which contained Qeturah’s contraption for draining power from Fire into gems. The bowl of water still glowed red. Unnerved, she dumped it out on the floor and asked Leah to sever the connection from the other side.

  A ring fell out, but when she shone her flashlight on it, she found it broken into four pieces. It must have absorbed too much power.

  Next Holly dug out the photo of her dad and removed the mirror shards glued to his eyes.

  To her relief, the next day her dad, while still quiet, stopped looking heartbroken. She only wished she could do the same for Ryan.

  “Should we plan a funeral?” Holly asked hesitantly that evening.

  Ryan shook his head. “I don’t think she’s dead. If she’d died in the tsunami, her body would have washed up by now.”

  Nimue had died months ago, her body burned to ash. Holly bit her lip. “So where do you think she is, then?”

  “I think she’s off her meds and on the streets somewhere.” His midnight-blue eyes looked haunted. “Your dad’s assistant contacted all the aid societies in Los Angeles, asking them to be on the lookout for her. I should’ve watched her more carefully,” he burst out.

  It drove splinters into her heart to see Ryan blaming himself. “Nimue was—is, I mean—an adult,” Holly pointed out carefully. “You’re not responsible for her decision not to take her meds.”

  Ryan didn’t look convinced.