He kept singing the Queen song long after the bathroom door shut and the water came on. His father sighed, knocking the last bit of the dust off the cushion. “I don’t understand why he slides across home plate when he can run across it just fine.”
Grayson smiled. “Good game?”
“They won by ten points,” his mother beamed. Then she saw the books. “Oh, what are you reading?”
Grayson almost laughed. She’d shown immense interest in her family’s reading choices for as long as he could remember.
“The Dark Mother and Her Children. I found it at Curiosity. It was published by Castle Cove’s University Press over a hundred years ago. I think it’s a collection of fairytales.”
Having ticked all her boxes, his mother came to the sofa and squeezed in beside him. “Let me see.”
She took the large volume in her hand. “This is amazing. Can I read it when you’re done?”
“Sure.”
“What’ve you learned so far?”
He recited the tale of Vendetta to her. Instead of looking delighted, she looked worried.
“What?” he asked, not understanding the worry on her face. “What’s wrong?”
“Why did you pick this book?” she asked. He couldn’t understand the strange, searching expression on her face.
“I didn’t,” he said. “Gladys picked it. Why?”
“They’re just fairytales,” she said. She was staring at the embossed cover, the creases between her eyes deeper than he’d ever seen them.
“I know.” It was so unlike his mother to say such a thing. She lived for fairytales. She believed they were keys to hidden truths and untold magic. There was no such thing as just fairytales. “What’s wrong?”
She handed the book back, but her scowl had deepened.
He thought of the returned demon brothers. Of what it had cost Vendetta to achieve her revenge.
His mind also caught on the words Druid’s Hollow.
“Promise me you’re not planning to do anything crazy,” his mother said. She clutched the book, looking as if she wouldn’t return it to him. “Like look for The Crone Tree so you can make a sacrifice and bring Landon back.”
When he didn’t answer quick enough, she yelled his name. “Grayson!”
“What?”
“Promise me!”
“I don’t even know what I’m promising not to do!” he admitted.
“Don’t go into the Western Woods and try to bring Landon back. It wouldn’t be Landon you brought back anyway.”
“It would be demon Landon,” he said.
“That isn’t funny,” his mother replied. Color had risen in her cheeks. “Don’t even joke about it.”
His father was regarding them both in a way as if he realized what danger they were all in. “It’s about time for bed, isn’t it?” he asked. When no one moved, his father added, “Honey, Grayson is a smart kid. He isn’t going to go into the Western Woods to resurrect demons. Right?”
It never occurred to Grayson that he could take it back. That maybe this was his chance to undo what had been done. With Landon alive, he wouldn’t have to live with this awful, terrible guilt.
With Landon alive...
His mother looked ready to explode. He forced a smile, “You worry too much, Mom.”
“Do I?” she asked.
Druid’s Hollow.
He thought he knew where it was.
As a wood scout, he’d done a report on the woods for his explorer badge. This meant that he’d crafted a detailed (and enormous) map of the woods for his project. It was his scout leader—a werewolf named Thomas—who’d corrected the map and made it to scale for him.
“Now you’ll never get lost, buddy,” he’d said.
Once his parents’ bedroom door clicked shut, Grayson crept up the stairs to his room. He eased open the closet. He pulled down a box of old photo albums and a box of trophies. Behind that was the mail canister. He popped the white plastic lid off one side and found the map rolled up inside. He took the map to his bed and unrolled it on top of his comforter.
It showed the city in the center and the outline of ocean on two sides—east and south. Then it showed the woods. North of the city stretching off into nowhere was the Wayward Woods. Sunset Park, the lake and lupine trails, Black Water River, even the Witch’s Backbone, a steep 8-mile hike. All of it was there. His scout master had even penciled in Howler’s Hollow, the meeting place of the resident werewolf packs.
In case you ever want to visit, he’d said with a wink.
But then there were the woods west of the territory line bisecting the Wayward Woods.
A marker read 23 miles from the territory line to Druid’s Hollow. So that’s where the tree was supposed to be.
Of course, 23 miles through a treacherous forest full of maneaters would be one hell of a trek. However, it was only about nine miles from Vendetta Heights to Druid’s Hollow. If he parked on Canyon Road and walked across the field known as Vendetta Heights, his journey would be shorter. There was the fact that Vendetta Heights was the make-out and feeding spot for local vampires and that these woods—even if only nine miles—were still crawling with monsters.
Was bringing Landon back really worth risking his own life?
He could never go in at night. It would be a massacre. But tomorrow, with daylight on his side, maybe, just maybe he could pull it off.
Reese
The next day she ate and drove to the beach. Rather than park on the side of the road, she decided to park in the South Beach parking lot. This gave her a view of the dilapidated castle on the cliff. It looked like a tired, weathered beast on the edge of suicide. With its cold stone crumbling, it looked ready to throw itself into the sea.
She’d heard the story of the castle, like any other long-time resident of Castle Cove. Once it had belonged to an evil queen, who had starved her people with her incessant greed and endless campaigns of war.
Vendetta alone had been granted the power to destroy the queen and bring down her queendom. Reese wasn’t sure how much of that was true or embellished. But here were the ruins.
She descended to the beach carefully, doing her best to keep her footing in the sliding sands.
Once she reached the water’s edge, she looked around to ensure she was alone.
She walked the eastern edge of the beach, hoping this little nook close to the cliffs would render her invisible to anyone on the ledge above. Here she stripped, placing her clothes on a large rock that seemed safe from any oncoming waves or rising tides.
She waded out into the water. It was cool, no doubt because of its depth, but not unbearable.
Once the water reached her thighs, she dove under the next wave. Her body transformed. Her muscles thickened. Organs moved. Her face elongated and her limbs condensed themselves into a single, streamlined form.
That instant calm enveloped her, a feeling she only experienced when in this form.
With gentle side-to-side motions, she propelled herself forward. She established an easy rhythm, cutting through the aquamarine waters. She would have to swim south until the rockface ended. Then the plan was to hook around it and swim north-northeast, following the cliffs as Ethan had suggested until she came upon the mouth of the underwater cave.
Her senses stretched out before her, scanning the waters for any other forms of life. She detected a school of fish feeding on even smaller fish off to her right. And also something with a slow, steady rhythm ahead. A turtle, she suspected. Nothing large, nothing dangerous loomed.
She slid through the rock wall using the gap beside Heart’s Rock. Most of her dorsal fin had to break the surface to manage it, but if someone on the beach saw her shark fin, what of it? She was far enough away not to frighten any swimmers.
On this side of the rock wall, the ocean felt vast. Far more vast than she was used to. Reef sharks preferred the tight confines of the reef buffered by an ocean floor. It offered protection on most sides. They were, after all, the big
fish in a little pond, so to speak.
Here, with nothing but miles and miles of deep waters on all sides, Reese knew she was exposed. She would have to keep her wits about her, or she could very well end up as lunch for a larger, more opportunistic creature.
She stayed close to the cliff face, scanning the waters around her with unease. After twenty minutes of swimming at a steady pace, the cliff face opened beside her, revealing a deep cavern.
Here, the waters were not so dark. In fact, they shone with crystalline light.
She swam into the cave, marveling at how bright the waters were and how warm as well. There was some light source coming from below.
Then she spotted the sirens. They were sleeping, half in, half out the water. Their tails stretched out behind them on the rock ledges like seals sunning in the late afternoon. Reese swam as close as she dared, trying to get a better look at them.
This close, she saw strange black markings on their skin. Rashes or growths, these patches of abnormality were embedded in the skin.
They’re sick, she realized. Would a sickness make them desperate enough to aggressively seek mates on shore? Or maybe the sickness had made them confused about where they were and what they were doing?
She wasn’t sure.
But they were restless even in repose, most fidgeting on their rocks as if they couldn’t get comfortable. One sleepy siren picked at the open sore of another, the black pus oozing into the water like oil.
Reese circled the cave several times and took inventory of the numbers and condition of the sirens. Very few looked untouched by whatever disease this was.
On her last pass in the cavern, she spotted something at the back of the cave. A partially submerged staircase led out of the water. Where it led, she couldn’t be sure from her vantage point beneath the surface. Should she go up and investigate? Maybe she would learn something about the sirens’ environment that would help them. Of course, there was the danger they would see her shapeshift and know that she was no mere shark.
Reese transformed into a woman and pulled herself out of the water onto the steps. Her bare feet scraped across the rough stone.
The second she straightened, water dripping down her back, a horrible screeching thrummed to life behind her.
The sirens had awakened. They thrashed on their rocks, throwing themselves into the water. Their lithe forms were torpedoing through the water toward her.
“Shit.” She bounded up the stairs two and three at a time, careful not to slip on the wet stone. At the top of the stairs was a stone door.
“Please be unlocked, please be unlocked, please be unlocked.”
The door opened under the hard push of her hand despite the weight of the stone. Behind her the sirens had stopped advancing. They now crowded the lower steps, but seemed unwilling to come up the stairs after her.
They can’t get out of the water, she thought. At least not this far.
Heart still hammering in her chest, she breathed a sigh of relief and closed the stone door behind her.
She was greeted by a narrow passage. Light filtered through cracks in its crumbling stone walls, giving her a clear enough sense of where she was going. At the end of the passage, another set of stairs appeared. She mounted these as well.
Stone passage, then stairs.
Another stone passage, then more stairs.
The labyrinth seemed to lead her higher and higher until her chest and legs were aching from the ascent.
“This is the last one,” she said aloud, when she pushed open yet another stone door to find only more stairs. “If there’s nothing here after this, I’m going back.”
But the end of this passage opened onto what could only be described as a courtyard. Light poured through a collapsed ceiling onto the flagstones below. The stones themselves were half-eaten with moss and determined vines had pushed themselves up through the cracks.
I’m in the castle, she realized, as she turned in its center, admiring the ruined splendor. The public wasn’t allowed to enter the castle ruins for fear that it would collapse and kill someone. Yet here she was, having found a secret passage inside.
A cacophony of beating wings tore a shriek from her throat. A cloud of pigeons coalesced atop a crumbling wall, cooing softly at her.
She followed the outline of the room to a small chamber. It had the air of an inner sanctum. But on the walls were ornate carvings of some kind. Clearly a stoneworker had license to embellish this stone either before or after it had been installed.
Reese crossed to the nearest carving and pressed her fingers to the etchings. A woman with long, flowing hair was extending her hand toward an enormous cobra that stood entranced before her. The next panel was the same exchange but the snake had changed. Now its form hunched over on itself. In the third and fourth panels, it was unfurling into a human form. If the woman was Vendetta, then it seemed her touch alone had transformed the snake into a human.
On the next wall, there was a small child crawling out of the sea and a woman there to welcome her with open arms.
This sparked a memory in Reese. Her first memory.
She was in the ocean—swimming? She had been following the slow, curious procession of a starfish when hands scooped her out of the water. For a moment she couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t see. The next she was in her aunt’s arms.
“Look at you!” her aunt cried. Her shocked face was full of bright sunlight. Her hazel eyes shone like amber. “Where did you come from?”
Reese couldn’t have been more than three or four years old at the time.
Could it be that Reese had simply come from the ocean? Transformed for the first time in her aunt’s own embrace?
Tell me again, Reese had begged over and over again. Tell me again about the day you found me.
You were on the beach, Constance said, all alone in the surf.
Reese had no memory of her parents or her life before she was here in Castle Cove. She remembered only those bright summers and endless waves, and then her aunt taking her home, caring for her as if she was her own. Her aunt had no true blood relation to her. Reese had asked on more than one occasion why she would bother taking in a child that wasn’t hers. A child with no history before her mysterious arrival in Castle Cove?
We aren’t kin, Reese had said.
Of course we are kin, Constance had said. With a kind smile, she’d gather the ink-dipped ends of Reese’s hair and run them through her fingers. She held it up to her own. Look at us.
Perhaps Ethan’s words had some truth to them—was it possible that Reese didn’t remember her life before Castle Cove because there had been only the ocean?
Had she been a shark first? A human second? Was this human life the dream life?
Reese fingered the stone reliefs and wondered. These were the only drawings with animals transforming under Vendetta’s watchful gaze, but Vendetta herself was everywhere. Reese must’ve found hundreds of reliefs of the woman with the wild, flowing hair in every weed-choked chamber she explored.
Another common theme was a tree, majestic with its gnarled limbs. Could it be The Crone Tree she’d heard of from the stories? She couldn’t be sure. The only question she had was whether or not these carvings existed first—validating the story—or if someone had seen the carvings later and made up the stories to match.
Perhaps she would never know.
Reese noticed a shift in the light. It was far more purple now than it had been when she’d set off this morning. And the rumble in her stomach seemed to confirm her suspicion. She’d lost track of time exploring the castle. If she didn’t leave now, she would have to swim back in the dark.
In all her searching, she didn’t find an exit out of the castle. How wonderful it would’ve been if she could’ve simply walked out of the ruins to her car. But she suspected that Ethan—or some other caretaker of the city—had been careful to seal the castle for the public’s protection.
Reese would have to return to the underground tunnel
and swim back to the beach, or she could try to climb out of here. She saw enough grooves in the rockface to know that she could probably do it. But it might be a long drop from the top if there were no handholds on the outside of the castle.
As much as Reese loathed the idea of walking all the way back to the underground cavern, she thought it was much safer than trying to climb out of the castle. If it had been sealed to protect the public from getting hurt, it stood to reason that the walls were not nearly as stable as they looked. The ruins were thousands of years old. They wouldn’t appreciate being climbed on.
Retracing her steps, she found the courtyard and the passage connecting it to the descending staircase. By the time she reached the underground cavern, her legs were shaking with fatigue.
Aqua waters shimmered on the stone steps, but there was no horde of sirens. Perhaps they’d gotten tired of waiting as she spent hours exploring the castle above. Or perhaps they were hoping she’d jump in so they could descend on her.
Regardless, the air had cooled, and she was still naked, tired, and hungry. She had to get back to shore with what energy she had left.
With a deep breath, she dove into the water, trying her best to transform in the air even if that meant a painful belly flop on the water’s surface.
She managed it, though pain ricocheted through her abdomen on impact. She sank beneath the water, seeing the sirens stir at the commotion. But unlike before they did not chase her.
It must only be human flesh, she thought, her body easing into a steady rhythm. Human flesh in the water is what draws them.
The swim back felt shorter despite her fatigue. She supposed it had to do with the fact that she knew where she was going this time and how far she must travel.
When she pulled her exhausted body out of the water, Ethan and Liam stood on the shore. Ethan, she realized, was standing in full sunset. Unlike the other demons she knew, he didn’t seem to die at sunrise. Demons couldn’t exist in the realms of light. Did this mean he was not a demon? If so, he must be something much, much worse.
Liam held his black umbrella open overhead.
Night Tide Page 41
