Guarded by the Vodnik (Monster Security Agency)

Chapter 1

Vodyan

T he soft sand of the lake bottom brushed my tentacles when I followed the cargo walker along the main road between Yeseera, the vodnik city, and Copper Harbor on the shore. I’d made this trip dozens of times in the past year.

It was a long, arduous walk, usually uneventful. The cargo walker was a simple platform on six crablike legs that slowly navigated the lake bottom. The eighteen-mile trip, which would have taken me just over an hour if I could swim freely, took about eight hours at the walker’s speed.

The road connecting the vodnik city to the shore was marked out along the shallowest parts of the lake bottom, but it was still over 150 feet underwater. It was dark and cold, the waters of the lake calm and quiet. Just as I liked them.

I pushed away from the bottom, my tentacles flexing with power. Propelled upward, I spread them out to float easily and did a full sweep of the area, focusing on the sparse plants that could potentially hold a lurking thief. My cargo was beyond precious, which was why I had been chosen to guard it.

Below me, the cargo walker crawled steadily up the road, faint lights mapping out the route. It wasn’t really a road in the human sense. Outside Yeseera and the graveyards, nobody built on the lake bottom. But it was the safest, shallowest route connecting the human world to the vodnik city, and as such, it was marked with flickering red lights placed at regular intervals.

They looked eerie in the cold, dark depths.

Walking along the road, my cargo was dangerously exposed, but this was the fastest route. Then again, it wasn’t like I minded a fight. An attack would do nicely to break the monotony of my assignment.

For now, all was clear, no suspicious shadows lurking around. I floated back down to the walker, letting the cold of the dense, clear waters numb my skin. My senses were still keen, but my scales felt porous, my body’s temperature matching the water.

I was one with the unfeeling, deadly mass of the lake.

Some time passed like this, and I lost myself in the soothing rhythm of travel. The red lights flickered, the sandy bedrock passing evenly under my tentacles, and the darkness around me stretched into infinity. I let my mind fill with the cold nothingness of the deep, keeping my senses alert.

Down here, the only currents were the ones caused by my and the walker’s movements. All was still and felt safe, but that didn’t lull me into carelessness. The cargo, stacked high on the walker’s platform and secured with chains, was the most expensive thing that ever graced the depths of Lake Superior.

Shanta.

It was a plant that grew only in the post-glacial, clear waters of the Great Lakes. Cultivated exclusively by vodniks, who possessed the secret to making it thrive, shanta yielded a substance that healed neural degeneration in humans and other species with similar brain physiology.

It was our wealth and the source of our significance. While humans measured their worth in gold, vodniks measured theirs in the units of shanta they produced .

The neat boxes of medicine were stamped with the official seal of the Yeseera extraction plant. And as one of MSA’s most highly regarded underwater agents, I had the task of protecting the precious cargo.

Shanta fetched incredibly high prices in legal sales, but on the black market, it was beyond invaluable, mostly because I’d never let a shipment slip. The little that made it to the surface illegally had been stolen in the production plant by unscrupulous employees that were quickly found out and punished.

Stealing shanta was as despicable as murder and as severely punished—with mutilation. That didn’t deter greedy vodniks and other creatures from trying their chances, though.

The shipment I guarded was worth millions of dollars, which was beyond tempting. Over the course of my service, many tried stealing my cargo, though only true water dwellers posed a risk.

I’d been attacked by human divers a few times. Disabling their breathing gear was child’s play, and for my effort, I got the dubious pleasure of watching them drown. It was an ugly, weak death, but then again, humans were a weak species. Fragile and too soft, they posed no threat to a vodnik.

Lamias, on the other hand, were mighty opponents.

A cold current brushed my back tentacles, my flexible muscles contracting instinctively. I kept moving, seemingly unaware of the disturbance that I knew wasn’t caused by my movements.

Somebody stalked me.

“Keep walking,” I said softly to override the walker’s programming that would force it to stop once it detected an anomaly.

Its light blinked blue to let me know it understood the command.

I followed the walker at an even pace, suppressing the urge to reach for the jet gun strapped to my arm. I’d never used it on this assignment before and, at this point, not needing it became a matter of pride. Unless forced into a corner, I was going to protect shanta with my arms and tentacles alone .

The water was still now, but that didn’t fool me. If I had been less experienced, I might have dismissed that brush of a current as an accident, but I knew better than that.

There were no accidents. Not down in the deeps.

But my stalker was careful, I had to give it to them. They kept their distance, moving cautiously. Since I knew this route by heart, I suspected where they planned to attack, so I relaxed and waited. I’d soon pass one of the underwater graveyards, a human shipwreck surrounded by a cage-like dome that guarded it from desecration.

There were over a dozen shipwreck graveyards dotting the bottom of Lake Superior. Since the bodies of the sailors stayed down here with their ships, protected from decomposing by the low temperature and the purity of the water, they were places of burial. Contracted by the humans, the vodniks built structures protecting the graveyards. Each was a latticework dome made of light gray concrete. The holes were big enough to let water flow freely but too small to admit adult sentient species entry.

Hulking over the sunken ship, the structure would give my pursuer cover and cut me off from following them around the dome. I had to stay close to the walker.

The graveyard swung into view, a darker shadow in the murky water. I kept my movements relaxed, my pace even. And still, a shiver ran down my spine as I approached. The water here seemed colder, stiller. It was a place of death.

Vodnik bodies were decomposed to nourish shanta after passing. We didn’t keep our dead around the way humans did.

My unease wasn’t irrational. I knew there were no ghosts here. Some vodniks loved to tell dark stories about the souls trapped in the dead human bodies, forced to endure the darkness and the cold for eternity, but I knew better. Death took everyone equally, regardless of their species.

And yet, I couldn’t shake the dread that crawled down my tentacles. It never fully went away. Not since I’d been trapped inside one of the graveyards when I was four.

The faintest brush of current from above made me clench my jaw.

A dark shape dove for me, detaching itself from the concrete cage surrounding the shipwreck. I had barely a moment to brace before it was on me, its slimy, long tail slamming into my side.

Lamia.

Lamias were the dumber, uglier, and more violent cousins of the vodniks, except while our lower bodies comprised of eight strong tentacles, a lamia had a thick, powerful snake tail.

That tail hit me with force, but I was ready. I stood my ground, spread out to hold my balance. As soon as the impetus slowed, I wrapped my tentacles around the lamia’s tail, making it impossible for him to wrap it around me.

He sneered, showing me a maw filled with black, sharp teeth, his flat, snakelike features contorting in hate. I swung a punch at his face and wrapped more tentacles around his torso and arms to keep him in place.

Something crunched under my knuckles.

The lamia screeched, the sack in his throat bulging with the sound. He struggled with so much force, I had to let him go. He sped away and turned, making the sand from the lake bottom rise around him in a cloud.

He was a big one, black and covered with swirling red scale patterns that broke in places, indicating scars. A warrior, then. Sharp fins ran down the back of his head and spine, growing bigger on his lower back. They were raised in a challenge now, the four barbels around his mouth spread out like whiskers.

His white, milky eyes narrowed a second before he charged.

I let him barrel into me. We both tumbled along the sandy bottom, but while he recovered from the hit, I was already wrapped around him so tightly, his ribs caved in under pressure. He struggled and roared in pain, but I held fast, reaching for the knife strapped to my waist .

“Do you know the punishment for stealing shanta?” I asked through gritted teeth, letting out bubbles.

I had a voice sack just like the lamia, allowing me to speak without expelling air, but agitation made me say it using my above-surface organs. The lamia probably didn’t understand me, but he saw the black blade in my hand. His eyes bulged, and he struggled harder. I wrapped a tentacle around his face, covering the gills at the sides of his head.

“Wonder what piece you’ll miss the most,” I gritted out, releasing more bubbles.

I hated that loss of control over my voice, but at least I had him in a chokehold. The lamia’s struggling grew weaker while I deliberated. I could burst his voice sack easily, but then, it would grow back. To do permanent damage, I’d have to pierce his vocal cords, but they were close to important blood vessels.

If my knife slipped, I’d kill him,

And I made a point of never killing lamias. Death was a mercy compared to letting them live knowing I’d cut off a part of their body, but it was more than that.

I refused to follow in my grandfather's footsteps.

Yet, the urge to snap the creature’s thick neck rose in my blood, colder than the coldest fury. I gritted my teeth with the effort of holding myself back. It was a matter of pride. Of self-control.

As long as I didn’t give in to my base instincts, I was in charge.

So no, I would not take away his voice. The lamia seized in my hold, rousing for one last effort to free himself, and I grabbed the end of his tail lashing uselessly by my side.

I slashed with my knife, holding the cold, slimy tail taut. Black blood inked the water around us, and the lamia screeched in agony.

One more slash, and the piece of tail fell, still writhing, onto the bottom. The lamia sagged in my hold with a pitiful sound of pain, and I pushed him away. He didn’t spare me a look before he swam away, his movements uneven and jagged. I’d cut off a piece longer than my forearm, effectively crippling him. He lost a chunk of his natural speed and balance.

Ahead, the cargo walker moved steadily onward. My communication chip buzzed, announcing an incoming call.

“Hold,” I said, using my voice sack.

The walker blinked blue and halted. I tapped the chip under my ear to open the communication line. Around me, the bloody water slowly thinned and cleared, the sand disturbed during the fight floating to the bottom.

“What?” I asked Malgeri, who was my boss and knew better than to contact me unless it was absolutely necessary.

“I’m putting you on protection detail, effective in twelve hours,” he said without preamble, his voice commanding and deep.

My tentacles contorted with irritation. I’d trained myself to take orders because it was a part of the job, and yet the urge to tell my boss to fuck himself was strong. He’d never sprung a job on me like that before.

“Protection detail?” I shook my head, my mouth twisting in displeasure. “Malgeri, you know very well that’s not my forte.”

“Not your forte,” he snorted. “You’re only my best water agent in the northern states right now. All your missions until now have been successful. No one else can claim that.”

Successful, sure. But guarding shanta was easy, and cutting off pieces of lamias was my life’s calling. Guarding a person, on the other hand, was a completely different matter. Yes, I’d done protection detail jobs here and there, but not in the last eight years or so. Usually, my boss honored my preferences.

“Because I guard cargo,” I snarled, consciously directing my voice into the voice sack, though it took effort. I was pissed. “You know I don’t work with people.”

I could almost see Malgeri wave my protests aside with a careless red hand. My boss was a demon who always got his way .

“You can consider her a piece of cargo for all I care. Look, Vodyan. The order came from the Department of Justice. They have an important witness, and they entrusted us with the job of keeping her safe until the first trial a month from now. And since I contacted you about it and told you the details, you have no choice. You’re already involved. Besides, guarding a warm body from time to time might do you some good. You’re already too fucking cold.”

I gritted my teeth until my jaw clicked. I could keep arguing, but Malgeri was right. If this was a federal order, I had no choice but to take the assignment.

“You said ‘her’. So it’s a female?” I asked, winding my tentacle around the chopped off bit of lamia tail to inspect it.

I normally didn’t keep souvenirs, but the rage brewing in my guts had grown tighter and colder recently. I needed to find a way to keep it leashed. Maybe hoarding bits of lamias would quench my thirst for blood.

Then again, that would be morbid and unnecessary. And if my neighbors discovered I kept bits of other creatures in my apartment, they’d fear and hate me even more.

“A human female,” Malgeri said, sounding like he was grinning. “As warm as they come.”

A shudder of revulsion crawled down my spine. A human. A weak, soft, whiny creature that would probably piss herself from fear when she saw me.

“And why the fuck did you pick me?” I asked, my tentacles tensing with cold fury. “Don’t give me that bullshit about me being your best. You have tons of better agents on land.”

Malgeri had the audacity to laugh. “Don’t sell yourself short. You are my best free agent right now, and the only trusted one in the lakes. See, she needs ultimate protection from a well-resourced criminal. In my genius, I suggested we hide her where no one will look.”

Meaning, under water. I had to grudgingly admit that was rather brilliant. Even though his strike of genius meant I would be inconvenienced for a fucking month, and most likely longer. Important trials liked to drag on .

“Fine,” I gritted out, releasing a small stream of bubbles.

Malgeri knew it as well as me—I had no choice.