by Parker Foye
He’d been injured. He’d been blinded? No wonder he was on this beach on this day with the death wish that had always simmered below the surface.
Benjamin had lived right on the edge of death, always. Before his injury, that edge had been channeled into activities fraught with so much risk it was impossible to tell if he was brave or insane. Adrenaline junkie, fighter, reckless, relentless. Aside from kelpies like Rez who had infiltrated the ranks, he was the most talented deepwater diver in the history of the US Navy.
And Benjamin’s injuries were honorable. He was a hero. Why would he give up now? The humans’ medicine must not be able to treat the blindness and the heart sickness. Perhaps a kelpie lore-mare would know what to do? Maybe she would be able to fix his sight or offer him some enhanced sense to compensate for the loss?
Rez wasn’t a healer, but he’d shoulder the cost for the explorations and remedies. He owed his friend his life, after all. What would Rez not do for him in his pain?
Another sacrifice must be found. Quickly. Benjamin couldn’t be allowed to die. He could not touch the water this day.
“Benjamin.”
His head swiveled toward Rez’s voice, strained and inhuman in kelpie form.
Rez stepped back and shape-shifted to the man his friend would know, albeit a man without any clothes. Ah, his friend wouldn’t see him anyway.
As a human, Rez spoke again. “Benjamin.” He’d missed this man.
Benjamin recoiled. “Who’s there?” His beautiful once-sharp eyes looked over and past Rez.
“What are you doing on this beach, Benjamin? I’m taking you home. You need help while you recover.” Rez squatted down, hoping to ease the man’s panic and determination that swirled like grains of sand in the wind.
“Are you from the hospital? You sound like...someone I once knew, but I don’t know you. And where did the horse go?”
Rez shoved away the question about the horse. Later. “You know me, Benjamin. I’m Rez.”
“Rez died, so fuck off with your practical joke. It isn’t funny.” Benjamin struggled to his feet and wobbled.
Without thought, Rez stretched out to catch him, steady him, save him the humiliation of falling. Electricity crackled between them as he cupped an elbow and gripped a forearm.
Contact. The pulse of power was a pact sealing. No! Rez had identified him as a victim first, but he hadn’t known the man was his friend, one of the only humans he’d ever cared for. Horrified, he began a prayer to an entity he’d never needed, never once asked for help. “I take it back, I take it back, I take it back. He’s not for the band. He’s for me. Please.”
Intention. Benjamin pushed backward out of Rez’s hold, unclenched a fistful of sand and poured it into his pocket, cocked his head toward the sound of the waves breaking, and ran to the water.
Submersion. Benjamin’s tall, lean body met the One Water and with his precarious balance and the strength of the undertow, he fell beneath the waves. The spell was complete, and Rez had never before wanted so desperately to undo it.
Chapter Two
The tangled shipwreck ropes of Rez’s emotions prevented him from taking his prey. Instinct told him to end Benjamin’s suffering while he was below the surface.
Never allow him another breath, but grab him and push against the current until they were out of the shallows. Then dive, dive, dive, forcing the remaining air from Benjamin’s body. The man would fall into unconsciousness almost instantly.
Instead, Rez jumped into the water and sought beneath the tide for him.
Benjamin’s body rolled with the current, and his eyes were closed and resigned. The water had accepted him as a sacrifice and wouldn’t part with him lightly. For kelpies were the guardians of the surf, the rocks, the coast and all the places where the One Water touched the land. Rez defied thousands of years of tradition when he caught Benjamin, dragged him into his arms and raced back toward the shore.
Sharks circled outside the kelpie’s perimeter. There were always a few sharks, drawn to the presence of a kelpie, though they were natural enemies.
Rez had never known sharks to attack full-grown kelpies, either, but he’d never seen them gather in such numbers. Something was very wrong.
By not completing the ritual and dragging Benjamin to his death, had he summoned the beasts? When Rez’s feet touched the shallows, he rose with his friend in his arms and ran toward the tide line.
Benjamin’s eyes were closed. Was he breathing? His hair stuck to Rez’s bare arms. The hospital scrubs were plastered to Benjamin’s body, which was muscled but far lighter than he had been last time they saw each other. Saltwater dripped from them both like they’d emerged from the tears of the Earth.
When he reached a point where the water would not touch them, he laid Benjamin on the sand. How much water had he swallowed? Rez rolled him onto his side, and leaned in close to check for breathing. Rez released his breath in relief—Benjamin was alive, but his lungs gurgled with water. Though Rez wasn’t powerful in healing magic, he knew a small spell to clear the seawater. What he didn’t know was how to remove the sacrifice mark, a red tattoo-like stain on Benjamin’s shoulder, so that he could go on living.
* * *
Benjamin went into the water, and the water spat him out. Rejected him. After his hallucinations about horses on the beach and Rez and tumbling beneath the waves. In return, he spat the briny water out. Okay, vomited it out. No sense in making the process sound pleasant. The water seared coming back up his throat and nasal passages, but he couldn’t keep from heaving all over the sand.
His stomach churned, and when he couldn’t hold it in any longer, he threw up again. That patch of nastiness on the beach was too close, so he rolled away from where he’d been sick. Toward the water.
“Hold still.”
Oh shit. The voice pinned Benjamin in place, even lying on the beach near the regurgitated water. Still hallucinating? Benjamin struggled to move away, and the blackness everywhere told him nothing, but he kept trying to kick-start his optics anyway.
“You need to move farther from the water.” Hands seized him and helped him move a short distance. The stranger with the voice like Rez settled on the ground near enough that Benjamin could feel him, even though they weren’t touching.
Rez liked issuing orders. Benjamin thought the bossy man might be Rez. His friend had always been self-assured. Yeah, they’d sometimes clashed, because Benjamin didn’t take orders very well, but he’d learned to take a few when he joined the Navy, and Rez had been his commanding officer.
“You’re dead.” Benjamin wiped the remnants of seawater from his mouth with the back of his arm.
“No, Benjamin. I’m not. But this isn’t the time for explanations. Let me take you somewhere you can clean up and dry off.”
The man who sounded like Rez presumed Benjamin would naturally agree to the plan.
“They were going to check me out of the hospital in a day or two.” Benjamin turned his attention back to the sand, sifting it between his fingers. “I don’t have a place to stay.”
“What about your father? Wouldn’t he take you in while you healed?”
“My father’s in a nursing home. The last few months, his dementia has worsened. He may recognize me today. He may not. And he’s the only family I have left.” Amazing how much it hurt that the bastard didn’t know him.
The wind was picking up, and the man who’d pulled him from the water sat close like he had no idea of personal space. “Nobody said you’d been blinded, Benjamin. Injured, yes. When did it happen? I saw you hurt in the blast, but your wounds looked like they weren’t life-threatening, and they weren’t on your face.”
“The damage isn’t to my eyes, but to my brain,” Benjamin said. “According to the doctors, my eyes should be in perfect operating condition, but the nerves a
nd visual center got wrecked.”
“I’m sorry. I wish I’d seen the signs of the ambush.”
He sounded so much like Rez that it was beginning to seem plausible, but they’d been together on an underwater mission when it all went FUBAR. Before his vision winked out, he’d seen Rez ripped apart by the explosion. Instant amputation. Rez lost an arm and had taken massive damage on his right side. The water had been red and almost hot around them, and Benjamin had tried to drag Rez to the surface as he bled out.
Which didn’t make sense. Somewhere during the conversation, Rez began stroking Benjamin’s hair, and it sure felt like Rez comforted him with two intact hands. Rez had always been a physical guy, not afraid to hug or slap you on the back or just make contact in small ways. So his touch was soothing and stimulating at once. It confirmed his identity. It was consistent with what Benjamin knew when he couldn’t see Rez’s face.
Rez sifted through Benjamin’s overgrown and unkempt hair and scratched gently at his scalp. It calmed Benjamin, and for a few moments, he forgot his injury, his guilt and his failure at the end to kill himself.
It seemed a kinder reversal from his memories of Rez’s brutal death. Instead of him holding Rez, deep in the waters of the Gulf, begging for some entity, some magic, something to save his best friend while dragging Rez’s body close to him and swimming hard for the surface, Rez held him, and the only liquid was cold seawater instead of scalding blood.
He shuddered.
“Can you walk?” Rez asked.
“I’m blind, not crippled.” Benjamin’s anger was directed at himself more than at Rez.
Useless. He wasn’t far from crippled. His balance was as compromised as his vision.
Benjamin’s stomach lurched again as Rez’s capable hand cradled his neck. He was rolled, and another hand clasped beneath his knees. Rez lifted him from the ground, which was no small feat. Benjamin was extremely tall, and he was no lightweight. He hadn’t been carried since he was a child. The sensation was so foreign, so unusual, that Benjamin almost pushed away, but instead grabbed and held on with his seeking hands.
Strangely, all Benjamin felt was skin, and when he turned into his friend’s body, he smelled an animal tang of sweat and salt and spices. “I don’t need to be carried. I’m not a baby.”
“I carried you out of the water.” The hands supporting him pressed him tighter, a hug, an offer of solace and safety.
“I was out of it,” he complained, but Benjamin accepted the comfort and didn’t question that he was pressed so close to his best friend. Rez was alive. He wasn’t angry. He seemed to be naked, judging by the lack of clothing in the places they touched. Why would a man skinny-dip when it was about forty degrees outside?
“I need to find us a way back to my place. Do you have a cell phone with you?”
“No. Yes. It’s in my pocket and as soaked as I am. Don’t you have a car? How’d you find me?”
Rez hesitated. “That’s a long story. I don’t have a car. We don’t have a phone. Let’s walk to the beach access and see if we can find a place to call for a cab. I need to get you out of the weather.”
* * *
Finding a taxi wasn’t difficult, despite the remote and off-season location. After a few minutes, a yellow sedan pulled onto the beach access road, and Rez waved at the driver.
The driver was a middle-aged African-American woman. She parked her cab and rolled the window down. “I was worried about you, honey,” she said. “It didn’t feel right dropping you off here by yourself, even though you told me you were meeting someone.”
Her concern for Benjamin touched Rez, because though she was smiling, she genuinely looked worried.
“But I’m glad to see you’re not alone. Still, as much as I love a good-lookin’ naked man, he’ll have to cover up, so we don’t get arrested.”
Rez glanced down at himself and at Benjamin, who was standing but shivering against Rez’s side and leaning heavily. “I don’t have a towel. If I did, I think he might need it more—he’s freezing.”
She pulled the trunk-release lever beside the steering wheel. “Get a couple of blankets. Get your friend situated, then put one on to keep you decent.”
On the drive to Rez’s condo, Benjamin slid over to the other side of the car, putting some distance between them. Rez was surprised that he wanted his friend back, closer. His hormones were waking up, and he was not supposed to be feeling anything toward Benjamin.
Besides, friend or not, Benjamin was marked as a sacrifice for the kelpie band. If Rez couldn’t undo the magical binding, he hadn’t done Benjamin any favors by pulling him out of the water.
The condo was a waterfront property used by the kelpies. Rez could have swum there from where he found Benjamin, but not without switching to his equine form. If Benjamin climbed onto his back and went into the water, old magic would make sure he did not come out again now that he was marked. Not acceptable.
But Benjamin was exhausted, sagging. Rez paid the cab driver and guided Benjamin into the condo’s mudroom. Rez dropped his towel and helped Benjamin to remove the wet scrubs, but left his boxer briefs.
Benjamin was shivering, and his sightless eyes roamed around the place. “I feel so fucking helpless, Rez. I can’t see shapes or shadows; I can’t orient myself. I can’t even prove to myself that you’re real because all I can do is listen to you. But the last time I saw you, you were dying. Your blood was in the water everywhere. You couldn’t have survived.”
“It’s me. I didn’t die.” Though there had been times when he wanted to die, especially before he knew Benjamin had lived. “I was healed. Here.” Rez guided Benjamin’s hand to the jagged scar where his old arm ended and a new one had been attached.
Magic had hammered him whole again. A brutal process that had replaced his arm with new growth welded in place by kelpie healing magic. The skin of his new arm was white and sleek, scar-free beneath the joining. It was as soft and unblemished as a child’s skin—a distinct difference from his other arm, which belonged to his warrior self. Calloused and muscled, lightly haired and tanned, marked with freckles and small scratches and scars from the hundreds of years of his life.
Benjamin ran his hand over the juncture where the old limb had been severed, then felt the smooth skin of the new arm. He reached out, seeking for the other arm, and Rez proffered it so he could feel the difference. “How can this be?”
“Have you ever heard of a kelpie?” Rez didn’t want to tell him. It was a secret so ingrained, so tightly protected, that to share it put his life into Benjamin’s hands. However, he’d trusted his friend before, so it should be safe, right?
* * *
“A what?” Benjamin was puzzled at the change of subject. Especially when he was grasping Rez’s arms. He pulled away, afraid the touch had gone beyond what was an acceptable length of time and into creepiness. He wasn’t upset by the contact, which must be a result of finding someone he knew and trusted in this dark new world.
It had to seem weird to Rez, though. Benjamin felt stupid for standing there frozen in just his underwear.
“A kelpie.”
He sifted through his memories because it sounded familiar. His brain gave him fewer images with word associations these days, though. “Like one of those Australian dogs?”
“No, like a shape-shifting water spirit in the form of a horse.”
“Are you telling me a story? Like a folktale? I don’t need a bedtime story. I think I just need sleep.” Maybe forever.
“We aren’t folktales. I’m a kelpie. I’ve lived for hundreds of years, and thanks to you, will most likely live for hundreds more. I was wounded in a way that would’ve killed a human, but we were in the water. My brethren brought me back to our grotto, and the healer saved me.
“That’s why the Navy couldn’t find my body. I wish I’d been able
to tell them not to search for me. I wish I’d trusted you with the truth before you were wounded.”
Rez’s voice was rumbly, rough and filled with an emotion Benjamin couldn’t identify but which registered as “truth.” It didn’t make sense, though. “I’m blind, not stupid.”
“I know. It’s something that must be hard to believe,” Rez said. “And it’s my fault you’re blind. I’ll try to make amends, but first, you need to get into the shower and warm up.”
Rez guided Benjamin down a short hall to the master bathroom, and Benjamin sank into the sensation of someone he trusted to lead him. He trusted that much, even though he’d been told a tale that confused him and defied what his overwhelmed mind wanted to know. So he relaxed into Rez, someone who would not let him fall.
After some twisting of squeaky faucet knobs, the water began to flow. The water pressure sounded weak, as feeble as Benjamin felt. As the water warmed, the steam rose, and there were more squeaky, clicking sounds. The water diverted to the showerhead.
“It’s a small condo and not very fancy,” Rez said.
Benjamin pivoted as if to take in the decor. “Looks first-class to me.”
“You’re breaking my heart, Benjamin.”
“Judging by the trail of distraught women in your wake, I’d say you didn’t have a heart.”
Rez snorted. It was animalistic and strange—a sound Benjamin had never heard from him or anyone else before.
Rez’s hand skimmed along Benjamin’s arm, then grasped his hand.
Benjamin looked toward his face in startlement. Visual confirmation would never happen again. When would he get used to it? The water was a gentle rain to his ears, and the steam was a warming blanket.
“This is a shower/tub combination. You’re going to need to step up and over the side. Lean on me.”
Rez’s touch made sense, then. Benjamin leaned into him and said, “How high do I have to step up? I’m less likely to stub my toe or fall on my face if I guess right.”
