Wyrmrider Justice: An Underwater Magic Urban Fantasy (The Fomorian Wyrmriders Book 3)

by Theophilus Monroe

"Of course it is," I said. "So is your plan. Only in this instance, I'm only risking myself. Your plan calls for risking all of Fomoria."

  "But the probability of success..."

  "Is within the realm of possibility," I said, interrupting my stubborn-as-weeds husband. "The probability of success with your plan is slim. Think about it, by the time Nephtalie attacks, we have no idea how many ships we'll be dealing with. You mean to give them enough power to make them all independent, then somehow use the rest of the magic that protects Fomoria to cast all of the ships into the void before Nephtalie siphons any of the power back again?"

  "I know we'd have to act fact. But once we power them with magic, we should be able to see them, too. We can't help you if we're fighting blind."

  "Even so, we'd have to do it lightning-fast. Because I know, being a siphon myself, I can siphon magic a lot faster than anyone else can cast it. It's as natural and as simple as breathing in. Nephtalie, more than likely, will steal all the magic you give the ghost ships before we have a chance to get more magic from the firmament, much less before the wyrms can cast a portal to the void."

  Agwe sighed and rubbed his left shoulder. "Okay, you're right. But I don't like this at all. You haven't dealt with the Kraken before. The thing is a nightmare."

  "So is Baron Samedi," I said. "He gave me nightmares for years, but that didn't stop me from sucking it up and striking a bargain."

  "You made a deal with Baron Samedi?" Agwe asked.

  "Shit," I said, scratching the back of my head. "You weren't supposed to know about that."

  Agwe snorted. "When were you going to tell me?"

  I shrugged. "I wasn't. All he wants is for me to turn Nephtalie into a vampire when all is said and done."

  "She's a siphon, Joni. Just like you. He came for you once because he wanted your power. Can you imagine what a Loa who governs death itself, who harvests the souls of the living, might do with a siphon's abilities?"

  "I honestly don't have a clue."

  "That's the scariest part," Agwe said. "No one knows what he might do. Turn the whole world into vampires, perhaps?"

  "Well, that would be dumb. They'd have no humans left for eating."

  "At least tell me it was the Green Baron with whom you struck your deal."

  I shrugged. "Hard to say. I think it was more like a Christmas Baron."

  "What does that even mean?" Agwe asked.

  "One eye green, one eye red. Christmas colors. Isn't that jolly?"

  Agwe sighed. "All it means is he has mixed motives. You have to break the bargain."

  "I can't," I said, biting my lip, darting my eyes back and forth.

  "What is the consequence if you do?"

  "We'd be divorced, separated, and I'd return to being mortal. I'd become the vampire siphon he wants."

  "For fuck's sake, Joni!"

  "Look," I said, taking Agwe by the hands. "It won't come to that. I'll give him Nephtalie. Then, whatever he has planned, we'll stop him. We'll do it together."

  Agwe pulled his hands away from mine and turned, swimming out of our quarters. He turned back and looked at me. "Go get your Kraken. Go save the world. But if you're willing to put our marriage, your divinity, and therefore your whole kingdom, up as collateral just so you can see the dead, I have nothing more to say to you."

  "Agwe! Stop! I can't do this without you!"

  Agwe narrowed his eyes. "I'll be here. I'll fight for Fomoria alongside you. But I'm done trying to win over your heart, Joni. From now on, to me, you are La Sirene. Our marriage, so long as it might last, is a political arrangement. Nothing more."

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  I THREW MY fist into the wall of the spire in my quarters. It barely made a thud, but it hurt like hell. I examined my hand. I didn't break it, at least. Even if I did, I could have healed it.

  The thing is, if I hadn't made that bargain with Baron Samedi, we wouldn't know crap about what Nephtalie was up to. I never would have found Enki and Cleo. I wouldn't have seen the whole ghost ship armada. Instead, we'd be going on as usual without any idea at all what was happening once Nephtalie attacked.

  Agwe was angry on principle. Putting our marriage up as collateral with the Baron—I know how bad it looked. But the truth of the matter was that our marriage was flailing along like a mermaid without a tail. And, if Fomoria fell to Nephtalie, it wouldn't just be our marriage that was at stake. It would be the lives of all our people. Besides, I didn't choose the terms of the bargain. The Baron insisted it be that way, and even he wasn't thinking about our marriage's health or lack thereof. He needed to strip me of my demigoddess status if he took me instead of Nephtalie. And I wasn't going to let that happen. I'd be damned before I let it. Which is precisely what would happen if I did.

  What pissed me off the most about Agwe's reaction to it all was that he didn't have faith that I'd be able to pull it off. The prospect of my failure was the only reason our marriage was at risk. What infuriated me the second most was how casually he seemed willing to put Fomoria at risk. Not just with his plan for defeating the ghost ships, but by suggesting I shouldn't have taken the deal with the Baron, to begin with. If I hadn't accepted his terms, what shot at all would we have had against Nephtalie? And if she won, if we couldn't stop her, Fomoria and the rest of the world would pay for it. Our lackluster marriage versus the fate of the whole freaking world. Put those things on a scale, and if it doesn't tip decidedly toward saving the world, then your priorities are all kinds of screwed up.

  I hated to admit it, but King Conand had told me once that monarchs have to be willing to make tough decisions. Sometimes they have to risk everything for their kingdoms. He made the wrong decisions in the end, but his sentiment wasn't wrong.

  I could only hope that once he'd had time to think about it, Agwe would come around. But if my decision cursed us to a loveless forever marriage, so be it. It would suck a big one. But I couldn't put my love life over the safety of my people.

  Before I headed to the Greenland Sea to try and retrieve the Kraken, I checked in on Shelly. She practically had the whole power plant up and running. It was surprisingly simple, what she'd done. A giant clam shell was the hull of it and, inside, she had a lot of glowing crap I couldn't identify. She insisted that so long as we kept the shell full, the reactions inside would create enough electricity to power Fomoria several times over.

  I squeezed Shelly's shoulder. "I don't know how this works, but I'm trusting you. It's totally safe, right?"

  "No risk of meltdown if that's what you're worried about. The reaction produced by these chemicals is stable."

  I didn't know how she knew about meltdowns. Probably something she picked up from Tahlia. I was in a hurry, so I didn't have time to question it. "How soon until you have power going to all the spires?"

  "With the merlegion helping, we have everything we need. We just have to run the wires. I'd say a day, maybe two."

  I nodded."I'm going to have to leave again. I hope to be back soon. But if you need anything, Tahlia has the authority to make decisions whenever I'm gone."

  "Not Agwe?" Shelly asked.

  I shook my head. "He is in charge of the legionnaires, he and Titus. But all domestic matters fall to the priestess. Tahlia will take care of anything you need."

  "Thanks, Joni!"

  I nodded, turned, and returned to the wyrm fields. The ghosts of Enki and Cleo were there, hovering near Nammu.

  "We have a mission," I said. "It'll just be us."

  Just you and me? Nammu asked.

  I glanced at Enki and Cleo. "You two can come, too."

  "We'll be with you no matter what!" Cleo said.

  "And I go where my mom goes," Enki added.

  Enki and Cleo? Nammu asked.

  "They'll be with us," I said. "We have to go a ways away. Can you cast wyrmholes anywhere on earth?"

  I can, La Sirene. Where are we going?

  "To the Greenland Sea," I said. "There's something rather large, exceedingly large, that we may have
to bring back with us. I don't think we can carry it."

  Not a problem, Nammu said. I can cast a wyrmhole over an object if necessary.

  "Good," I said. "Looks like you're still armored up, so we should be good to go."

  I mounted Nammu, tugged on her reins, ad we took off through the firmament. Enki, Cleo riding on his back, followed us not far behind.

  Nammu exhaled, forming a giant wyrmhole. She knew where we were going. I didn't even have to bother asking. We plunged through it, Enki and Cleo joined us.

  The cold water struck me like a brick upside the head.

  "Holy Lord!" I said. "It's colder than the balls of a brass monkey out here!"

  "Colder than what?" Cleo asked.

  I shrugged. "Another saying I picked up. Not that I'd really know much about brass monkey balls. But I assume they'd be colder than a well digger's ass on the Klondike!"

  "They keep coming, don't they?" Cleo smirked.

  I shrugged as I wrapped my arms around myself. "You get the point. These waters are freezing!"

  What did you expect? Nammu asked. This is the Greenland Sea.

  "All I know is that if it gets any colder, my nipples are going to tear this bra to shreds!"

  Cleo laughed. "Now that's a metaphor I can understand."

  "Aren't you cold, too?"

  "I'm a ghost," Cleo said. "I prefer the warm waters. It's an energy we can use. But we don't feel the temperature."

  And my scales are too thick, Nammu added. It'll take a while before I notice anything at all.

  "Well, color me jealous," I quipped, rubbing my hands up and down my arms. The thing about being underwater, not a lot of friction. It didn't warm me up at all.

  "Do you know what we're looking for?" Cleo asked.

  "All Agwe said was that the Kraken, as it sleeps, is like stone. Its nose appears at the surface like two rocks sticking out of the water."

  "If the case," Cleo said, "it won't be in waters any deeper than the size of its whole body."

  I nodded. "Of course, from what I understand, the Kraken is huge. Still, you're right. We'll probably have more luck starting in shallower waters. I can't imagine the thing's body is big enough to rise from the deepest parts of the sea."

  We're not far from shore as it is, Nammu said. These waters might be of an appropriate depth.

  "Good," I said. "Because I don't know how much of this cold water I can take."

  If it gets too cold, we can always go back to the Caribbean to warm up.

  I shook my head. "Not unless we absolutely have to. We need to do this as fast as possible. There's no telling how soon it will be before Nephtlie attacks Fomoria. I'm hoping the Kraken can help us stop her."

  "Let's spread out," Cleo said. "Stay within sight of us, and we'll survey the waters around us where you can't see."

  "Good idea," I said. "Let's get closer to the surface, so if we encounter any stone objects, we can pop up see if something like a double-pointed nose of some kind might be sticking out through the surface."

  Nammu, slithering her body through the waters, took us up nearer the surface. As my body crested through, briefly, the cold air on my wet and already shivering body made me regret it. I directed Nammu to take us a touch deeper. I wanted to stay submerged but stay close enough to the surface that I could get to the surface to peek at whatever we might find. Also, the surface water was a degree or two warmer than the deeper waters. It wasn't much, but it certainly felt more tolerable. Even if just barely.

  I started to think that guarding the Kraken with the Valkyrie must be overkill. Who in their right mind would dive into these waters, anyway, to retrieve the Kraken's totem? Someone clearly out of their right mind—like yours truly.

  Enki and Cleo swam maybe a hundred yards or so to our right. They crested the surface more often than we did since the cold air wasn't a deterrent. I could only pray that we'd find the Kraken soon. I was starting to worry that I'd be a block of ice by the time we found it—hardly a condition suitable for taking on the Valkyrie.

  I looked all around. There wasn't much to see. We saw a few rock formations as we swam, but none resembled anything like a stone octopus.

  As I looked all around, I saw Cleo waving at me from a distance.

  "I think they've found something," I said.

  Nammu turned and took us closer to Cleo and Enki.

  "This might be it," Cleo said. "From the surface, two rocks just like you said Agwe told you."

  We swam a little closer. It was hard to tell for sure. The rock formation was covered in pale moss. But I could see enough of it that it might vaguely resemble a giant octopus, the bottoms of it twisted together as if it was the beast's tentacles. The top of the formation was round and bulbous and where it broke through the surface, I supposed, was an appropriate place for the creature's nose. I didn't think that octopuses had noses, strictly speaking, but then again, we weren't dealing with a traditional octopus. The Caribbean Reef octopuses I was accustomed to encountering were much smaller, too, and probably nothing like those that might inhabit these waters. I didn't know at all what to expect in terms of the creature's appearance. So, trying to determine with any certainty if what we were looking at was the Kraken was impossible. Unless, of course, we encountered the Valkyrie. That would be a dead giveaway. Hopefully not too dead, though. This was a battle I was intent on winning.

  I dismounted Nammu and, kicking my tail, swam around the formation. Up close, I could swear that some of the rocks that formed what I imagined were the Kraken's tentacles suckers on them. But some of them also had sharp, pointed rocks sticking out of them. Did the Kraken have claws? Lord, I hoped not. If this was it, though, it probably did.

  I didn't see anything that resembled a totem. Not yet, anyway. Still, I imagined that since the tentacle-like formations were twisted together, the totem was probably inside.

  The formation was probably the height of Fomoria, from the sea floor to firmament. If it spread out its tentacles, it would be pretty wide. Probably not big enough to swallow up my kingdom, but certainly large enough that if it latched itself onto the firmament, it would frighten the piss out of most of the citizens.

  Still, I didn't intend to unleash this thing unless Nephtalie was near. And she had far more power at her disposal than the firmament contained. Give me a choice between a Fun Size Snickers and a full-size bar, and I'll go with the bigger bar every time. I hoped that the Kraken would follow a similar logic.

  In my experience, bigger is usually better. It was a sentiment that I regrettably communicated to Agwe before. Now, I sort of regretted it. Even if it was true.

  So far, no sign of the Valkyrie. There was a small opening, almost like a cave, where I imagined two of the tentacle-like rock structures met the top of the formation before descending toward the sea floor.

  I swam up to it and ducked my head inside. It was dark. I touched my wrist, channeled a little Fomorian magic into the sigil inscribed there, and summoned my trident.

  It glowed with blue magic, illuminating my surroundings. The cave opened up and then went down. Consistent, again, with what I imagined.

  The light from my trident reflected off of something. Was it the totem?

  Whatever it hit moved. And then, three figures blasted up from the deep toward me. I swung my trident, catching the sword of one of them.

  The Valkyrie were winged creatures—though I wasn't sure what good their wings did for them underwater.

  The second one took a swipe at me.

  I ducked and, hooking its blade with my trident, flung it out of the Valkyrie's hand.

  The third Valkyrie kept its distance. Its long, white hair shimmered in the light of my Trident, and whatever golden glow emanated from the tip of its blade.

  Then it shot its magic at me.

  Bingo, I thought.

  I inhaled, drawing it in whatever it was. It was warm. The heat spread throughout my body—at the moment, I appreciated it. Until I tried to amplify what I siphoned, the whole
feeling overtook me, overwhelming my senses.

  I shook my body hard, swinging my Trident haphazardly. I couldn't see a thing, but if the first Valkyrie, who still had his blade in hand, came after me, I hoped I might get lucky and knock it out of the way.

  I didn't hear any clink of metal meeting metal. I couldn't hear much at all.

  Something grabbed my wrist and my other wrist. A force stronger than I could resist forced them together. I released my Trident. I could always summon it again. But they had me.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  WHEN THE GOLD energies surrounding me disappeared I found myself standing on a giant platform, like a bridge. It glowed with reds, blues, greens, and oranges.

  The three Valkyrie surrounded me, one of them holding me by whatever it was he'd handcuffed me with and pushed me forward.

  Legs, I had legs. How'd I shift into human form? I didn't intend to.

  The Valkyrie who was pushing me said something—I didn't understand a word of it. The three of them escorted me toward what looked like some kind of castle. The skies above us were black as night. The only light was cast by the rainbow-colored bridge under my feet.

  I stumbled a little. My armor needed to be hiked up to give my legs room to move. But there wasn't much chance, I figured, at convincing the Valkyrie to allow me a break to adjust myself.

  I'd been to Annwn before. Agwe said that Valhalla, where the Norse gods now lived, was a part of the same dimension. All I could figure was that it must've been a long way away from the garden groves I'd visited before.

  The two Valkyrie on either side of me walked ahead and opened two heavy doors at the far end of the bridge, seemingly constructed of iron. Around the doors was a giant structure, something like a castle. It stretched into the sky higher than I could see, vanishing in the darkness. The Valkyrie behind me pressed me forward. I stepped through the doors.

  We were in a giant throne room. Three thrones sat on the far end of the room. The ones on the right and left were unoccupied. And old man, with a giant broadsword in his hands, its point scraping the ground between his feet, sat in the center throne.