Salt & Venom (Blood, Bloom, & Water Book 2)

by Amy McNulty

  “Ivy, come on!” called Ember from behind me, her voice practically bursting with her impatience.

  “So what’ll it be?” asked Orin as casually as if he were asking me to choose between a slice of pie and piece of cake for dessert. “Help your team or lead your target into the lion’s den?”

  “She’s not my—” My mouth snapped shut. I’d gotten Ember here alone, exactly as we’d planned.

  Once we made sure Journey was safe, ending this could be so easy…

  I’d save the merfolk and I’d never have to speak to them again. Surely, even if she lost, Ember wouldn’t want Raelynn to pay the price for that. Rae was Journey’s friend, too.

  “Make sure they don’t kill each other,” I said, not wanting the merfolk to jeopardize my chances by super-killing a vampire—how did one double-kill the undead?—any more than I wanted the vampires to end my friends.

  My… comrades. I couldn’t say if friends would keep something like this from each other.

  “When am I ever not on the job, yeah?” said Orin, shuffling his feet. “Though I can’t be everywhere at once.”

  I shot him a grimace and scrambled back to the door at the back of the house, where Ember was practically bouncing on her feet.

  “It won’t open,” she snapped.

  I laid my palm flat against the sensor beside the door. After a whirring, the door latch unlocked, revealing the long, glass walkway with the coating of water at our feet.

  “Oh,” said Ember, taking a look at it. She frowned but kicked off her red dress shoes and waded forward, the sloshing echoing in the narrow space. “They thought this would stop me?”

  “Not you,” I said, feeling the coolness seep through the aquatic shoes and to my toes. “Them.”

  She snorted. “Dean found an easy enough way around that, though, didn’t he?”

  I wasn’t sure why none of us seemed to have ever considered vampires in diving suits. Maybe because picturing them out of that showy attire was an impossibility. Subtle, they weren’t. But parading around in diving suits went right along with that.

  Ember tugged on the door handle. “Locked again.”

  Shaking my head, I reached my palm for the second sensor.

  “That’s an abundance of caution,” said Ember as the sensor read my palmprint. “What, they thought someone would get past the first door and then lose whatever hostage they were using in the short amount of time it took to cross this thing, so they couldn’t get the second door open?”

  “They’re a cautious people,” I said as the door lock snapped open. I pushed on it and stepped through, rotating one ankle and then the other in the air to get the excess water off my shoes.

  “Maybe, but their traps are easy enough to work around,” said Ember. “Even for vamp—”

  With a great splash from behind me, Ember went quiet.

  “Ember!” I shouted, swirling back around to face the glass walkway.

  The water that had coated the walkway was growing, the flooding area splashing out and onto my ankles.

  “Ember?”

  A hole had opened up at the end of the walkway, a trap door beneath the metal panel I hadn’t even thought about being there. She had to have fallen in.

  “Hey!” called a voice from behind me. It wasn’t Ember’s.

  And Ember couldn’t breathe down there like I could.

  I spared a glance past the laundry machines and to the sparkling pool at the bottom of the dual staircase. Someone was floating on the middle of it on one of those inflatable toys—a fairly big one fashioned to look like a plastic paradise, complete with fake palm tree.

  Journey Slowe.

  “Did you say ‘Ember’…?” she called.

  I wondered why she didn’t just jump off the float and make her way over to me.

  In any case, she was confirmed to not be in danger right now. I pasted my arms together straight above me in a diver’s pose and jumped headfirst down into the hole, thinking of water and Calder—how I wanted to maybe throttle Calder—and willing my feet to tingle, my legs to snap together, and my tail to grow. A thunderous echo rang out above me and I spared a glance upward to see the trap door swinging back shut.

  Someone had set that thing off. Unless it somehow knew to drop for anyone who wasn’t escorted by a member of the family.

  I snapped back to business, looking this way and that. Feeling the water hit my lungs through the gills I’d sprouted, I didn’t even have time to feel the sense of relaxation the water usually offered, to let my muscles unwind as I scoured the waters for my step-sister.

  At the end of this moat, where the waters branched off into the river, there was a flash of red dress, blue fin.

  Someone had taken her.

  Those idiots! Merfolk weren’t allowed to hurt the champion.

  Or I supposed it was more like merfolk weren’t allowed to deal the final blow to the champion?

  I didn’t have time to worry about that just then. Flipping my fins as hard as I could, I torpedoed after them, the moat obnoxiously long. When I reached the river and I turned, I looked for the telltale bright, red fabric, but I couldn’t find any.

  Instead, all I saw was Cascade peeking around a corner, a turn-off from the river that led back to the house. To the underwater portion of the basement. I went after her.

  “Whoa,” she singsonged, flipping her tail to float a bit backward as I approached. “What’s the rush? We got her.”

  I waved a hand through the water. “Where is she?”

  Cascade looked over her shoulder. “My cousin took her to join the hostage.”

  “Yeah, about that…” I bit my tongue. Not now. “Did you know vampires are attacking Calder, Llyr, and Laguna in the yard?”

  She nodded. “We turned on the sprinklers, thinking it would get that vampire away from his champion. How did he think to wear the suit?”

  Shaking my head, I swam past her into the narrow entryway leading to the house, past the water heater and furnace and all the other normal basement equipment on the other side of the glass. Cascade was at my fins, following me silently.

  I startled when Bay appeared just as we approached the bright blue glow indicating the pool beneath the dual staircases. Little had I known that I needn’t have taken this long way around.

  “Queen Nerida sent reinforcements outside,” he said. “We need to make this quick.” He locked eyes with me. “Whatever you’re going to do to make her surrender—do it fast. Before…”

  “Before?” I asked.

  But Bay just shook his head.

  My stomach roiled as a tingling spread through my chest. I swam past him, popping my head out of the water and gasping, letting my lungs take in air as they expelled the need for water.

  “Ivy?”

  Floating in place, I rotated around, wiping a lock of hair out of my line of sight.

  Journey was on her knees and crawling across her plastic island floaty.

  A pale leg dangled off the side, leading up to a soaked and mussed deep red dress.

  “She’s not breathing!” said Journey, and I realized with a start that her hands were clasped together over Ember’s sternum, pressing hard in rapid compressions. “Ember!”

  I swam over as fast as my tail would carry me, grabbing hold of the side of the plastic island and trying to lift myself up, though it was cramped enough with two people.

  “Stop!” called a commanding, feminine voice from above me.

  Nerida snaked down one of the stairways, clutching the bannister with a poised, delicate hand. She had a sort of seashell crown on her head, her legs breaking through a gap in her pale blue crinoline dress that hung off her shoulders like a waterfall. “If the vampire champion falls—”

  “If she falls now, it won’t be because I beat her,” I snapped. “How dare you?”

  Journey was ignoring us both, blowing air into Ember’s mouth as she moved back to the compressions.

  “Back up!” I shouted at her, then I grabbed hold of
the side of the floatation device to lift myself higher out of the water before raising my right hand up, summoning the cold to my fingertips.

  “Ivy, think about what you’re doing—” started Nerida.

  But I had. I flung a massive ice ball straight at Ember’s chest.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Ember sat up with a start, water spewing from between her lips. My ice ball had gotten her breathing, just like I’d intended.

  “Foolish girl,” snapped Nerida, her feet flying down the rest of the steps. More of the adults sauntered out to the entryway from the kitchen, a couple of others appearing at the top of the staircases and heading down after their queen.

  Bay and Cascade emerged a short distance behind me out of the water. That brought the total up to eight merfolk—and me—surrounding both Ember and Journey in the water. The others were either back at the lake, as we’d planned, unable to provide support, or outside helping Calder, Laguna, and Llyr—the “backup” Bay had mentioned.

  I had a brief thought to thank the vampires for distracting some of the merfolk—then shook my head at the absurdity.

  But it was true. I felt outnumbered. And not at all ready to menace Ember into submission.

  What was the plan again? Threaten the orb—threaten to use the orb—no, they’d made Journey a hostage and—

  Ember’s gasps and Journey slapping her on the back over and over echoed out hollowly throughout the indoor pool-like entryway. I took stock of them both—they seemed worse for wear. Ember was soaked, naturally, and still spitting. Journey had a bump on her head caked with dried blood and the muscles in my chest tightened at the thought of whether it had been caused by the accident or a conk on the head.

  Delivered by my allies.

  “Are you okay?” asked Ember through coughs.

  “Am I okay?” repeated Journey. “What about you?”

  “Fine,” she said, training her eyes on me specifically. “Caught unawares is all. I’m not opposed to a swim.” She sneered at me as she rubbed her chest absentmindedly.

  Maybe it was best she didn’t know exactly how we’d gotten her breathing again.

  “Well?” asked Nerida as she neared the edge of the pool. “Are you going to proceed or do I have to get in there and make you?” Her nostrils flared, completely at odds with her goddess-like appearance.

  I clung to the thick plastic behind me, a jagged seam digging sharply into my palm. I’d never seen the queen so unhinged.

  “So…” said Journey from behind me. “Mermaids.”

  “You didn’t know?” I asked her.

  Journey and Ember exchanged a look. They were hiding something…

  I reached out and grabbed Journey by the wrist, ignoring her startled cry.

  “Ember and Dean asked that we not repeat the night of your Homecoming dance,” said a voluptuous, pale redhead as she poured me—Journey—a drink in a wine glass. It was red, but too dark to be blood. Still, I shuddered as the scent of iron in the air hit my nostrils.

  I recognized the woman as Principal Horne again. I’d never forget the way she’d peered at me—the real me—in the mini golf parking lot. Like she’d let her underlings handle all the dirty work, but she was confident enough she’d see me soon. She’d gotten away unscathed from the go-kart crash. The paper had reported it as an accident, and the vampire driver must have made his way back to the authorities and with Orin’s help or something, convinced them to let him go without treatment. All while Ember’s dad had been chasing us down the highway.

  Speaking of, Ember’s dad was near me—Journey—lying on a plush chaise lounge, his head rolled back and a dazed expression on his face, looking for all the world like he was high on some kind of drug. “Wait until you’re a little older,” he slurred. “Then you can decide for yourself. You’re just a kid.”

  Principal Horne tittered, her fingers dancing across her lips as she walked behind the chaise lounge. “Thomas, you forget the age at which I turned so many of my finest family members.” Her hand danced atop his head gently, lightly. “You may be one of my oldest one day.” She bent over and whispered something in his ear I couldn’t hear.

  My—Journey’s—dark hand reached out to grab the drink with shaking fingers. Looking around, I spotted a familiar face among the unfamiliar people stretched out on furniture much like Ember’s dad was. Across the way sat Devam, a dreamy smile on his lips. A pale, bright-blue-eyed seductress stood behind his chair, clutching his shoulders.

  I clutched the goblet tighter. “When Ember wins this thing, we’ll talk.” The words past my lips rung out in Journey’s voice. “Until then, both Devam and I are off the menu.” I drank the drink quickly.

  Principal Horne’s prickly sweet laughter reminded me of an old-timey moll’s. “Are you sure that’s what your little boyfriend wants, dear? To wait?”

  The vampire behind Devam leaned closer to his neck—

  I snapped back to the present, the glistening blue lights of the pool being lit from below, the sharp smell of the lake water filtered inside this home.

  “Where’s Devam…?” I asked, still adjusting to the present. “He’s on his way to being one of them?”

  Nerida was barking out something behind me, but for a moment, I couldn’t make out the words. “…dive in.”

  Journey and Ember were communicating something silent between them. Then Journey asked, “Her mindreading thing you all guessed about?”

  “Does she have to touch someone for it to happen?” asked Ember.

  Calder had been right. By revealing I knew about Ember’s dad, I’d made them suspect.

  Journey reached over and grabbed my hand. “Ask me what the mermaids plan to do if they win,” she said.

  “What?” I tried to pull away. Like she would know any better than I…

  But the merfolk had been proven to be keeping some things from me.

  “Just read my mind,” she said. A splash—and then another—behind me. I looked over my shoulder to find Beck and Dathan, Calder’s uncle and Bay’s dad, jumping up from the water, piles of clothes on either side of the pool. Shadows below me indicated there were more merfolk out of sight.

  “It doesn’t… work like that,” I said. It was supposed to be a subconscious memory. Not actively reading thoughts.

  “Then however it works, do it,” she said. Ember crawled closer. “Or I can just tell you they’re going to flood the world and drown the humans—animals, plants, everything—if they win this.”

  …What?

  “You didn’t know,” said Ember, a bit of the edge gone from her voice.

  “Vampires want to turn humans into bloodbags,” I hissed, my back now to Ember and Journey as I took in the merfolk approaching me. Bay and Cascade were part of this—trapping me in a semi-circle along with the older men. Then there were the ones I couldn’t see below.

  “Yeah, a few,” said Ember. “A few willing participants. That or everyone dead? Doesn’t take a genius to see who’s on the right side here.”

  Without even turning around, I raised my arm up and grabbed the nearest wrist—wet, so I assumed Ember’s.

  “They want to what?” I—Ember—said, pushing away from a soft, cold chest I’d rested my cheek on.

  Dean’s bright blue eyes met mine in the darkness. We were at a park—Standing Springs Park. It was night, and my eyes took a moment to adjust to the dim light from the moon and stars as they twinkled over the surface of the lake. Me—the real me—wondered what they were doing here, so close to the underwater castle of sorts. Did they know it was there?

  What if they’d put on their diving suits and launched an attack when we’d never suspected it?

  Dean gave me—Ember—a side hug. “That’s why we want to stop them. We’d have no qualms about live and let live to begin with if they hadn’t wanted to wipe us out first. We were just about the only thing standing between them and claiming the power of the consummate land to raise the waters and turn the whole world into a fishfolk wond
erland.”

  The reality sunk in for a good, long moment. “Calder didn’t seem that evil,” said Ember through what felt like my lips. Her voice was quiet. “Why would he do this? Does Ivy know?”

  Dean shrugged against me. “That’s above my pay grade to figure out. Maybe… Maybe from his point of view, he’s not so evil.”

  “But how—?”

  “Are humans really the best custodians of this world?” a familiar voice with a slightly British lilt to it said from behind us.

  Orin was wandering over from the parking lot—not that I’d ever seen the guy with a car. He just sort of… appeared places. He slipped a phone giving off a bright light into the night into his pocket and nodded as he approached. “Just saying. Climate change and war and poverty. Humanity seems kind of snookered to me.”

  “No,” said Ember—I—as I dug my nails into the arm of Dean’s suitcoat. “I won’t let you people give up on all of humankind.”

  “The fact of the matter is, the planet might be better off without most of you,” said Orin, slipping on top of the picnic table beside us.

  I squeezed Dean’s arm harder. He lifted my face, gentle fingers beneath my chin, and my cheeks flushed as I fought the urge to move forward and kiss him. “But there are people you love,” he said. “And we vampires aren’t keen on the idea of water everywhere, either.” A smile flitted across his lips. “Don’t worry, doll. We’ll win.”

  “She’s going to the golf outing,” said Orin, just as the memory started fading away.

  Of course that wily observer had been the one to tell them.

  He might have been using my brainwashed mom as a spy.

  In any case, I shook my head to clear it, a headache pounding beneath my temples, perhaps from overuse of this mindreading gift. My hand slipped from Ember’s arm.

  “Well?” she said as the merfolk swam closer. “Do you believe me now?”

  “They could be lying to you,” I gritted out past my teeth. Right now, I didn’t really feel like the merfolk were my saviors.

  Ember let out an exhausted sigh. “Or they could be lying to you.”

  Whipping around, I grabbed hold of the float, rocking it and sending Journey and Ember scrambling backward a bit as I hoisted myself all the way up. My tail still dipped in the pool, my fins fluttering below.