Chapter 28
I slowed and peered at the limbs surrounding us. They remained unchanged. Unable to burn because there was no longer blood flow.
No beating heart.
It wasn’t until we neared the lagoon that I realized what had been missing from the carnage we’d walked through.
Heads. Torsos.
At least ten of both encircled half of the lagoon—torsos thrust upon large sticks inserted into the sand. Blood dripped from ripped skin. Entrails swayed in the breeze. Flesh bubbled as the sun crept toward the mangroves at the northern end of the lagoon. My father didn’t appear to be among them.
Labored breaths wheezed into the morning air. As well as the occasional soft groan.
The closer we dared to get, the more my nausea worsened. When we reached the sand, it seized me by the throat. I folded over and tried not to vomit as bile repeatedly rose to my drying tongue.
Brey gripped my elbow. “Ethel.”
Cold sweat dampened my skin. I held up a hand. “I j-just need a moment.”
“Take as many moments as you need, darling. It’s quite a sight, isn’t it?” The voice was sugar coated in a layer of sand.
Dread tightened every muscle. Brey’s grip firmed around my elbow as he braced beside me, knife glinting in his other hand, and I knew he’d said my name to warn me.
I placed my hands on my legs and looked over at the woman who’d spoken.
Only to find a creature as horrific as she was beautiful.
As if waiting for the sun to warm her, she lay draped across the sand beneath the ward we needed to feed, a scaled tail swishing in the water. Her skin was leathery, somewhere between purple and gray, and crinkled like a human who’d spent too long in a bathing pool.
“The lengths I must go to.” Flicking seaweed that hung like hair from her head over her bony shoulder, she revealed what appeared to be gills at her reed-thin throat.
“But you see, if they’d just listened to me, things might have been different.
” With a knowing look, she pried a piece of flesh from her teeth with a small bone.
“Things are often different when people care to listen.”
I couldn’t speak.
So when Brey tugged me forward, I just gaped at him.
He stopped before two groaning vampires and the lagoon, then asked, “May we have your name?”
Now that we were closer, I could see that her tail wasn’t covered in scales but gleaming pearlescent shells—and that her eyes were as void as the darkness that delivered us to these wards.
“You know,” she pointed her bone toward us, “no one has ever asked me that.” As though it were a secret, she said, “And I’ve lived long enough to see most of your ancestors.
” Quieting, she placed her hands on the sand and curled her upper body.
“Yet I do not recall any of them being as pretty as you.”
I was tempted to roll my eyes. Fear kept me from doing anything more than breathing.
Brey gave her his best grin. “I have a lot of ancestors, so that is quite the compliment.”
“Quite,” the creature snapped. With a smile that revealed triangular and sooty-colored teeth, she lowered to her stomach and set her pointed chin in the palm of her long hand. “Come closer. I wish to better admire you.”
A loud groan came from behind us as the smell of burning flesh intensified. But I didn’t dare look away from the monster attempting to trick my husband.
“Your name first,” Brey said.
If the creature had eyebrows, I imagined one would have lifted. Instead, her skin further crinkled above her utterly black eyes. “A game?”
Brey tipped a shoulder, appearing unperturbed, although he still held tight to his blade and my arm. “If you’ve got time.”
“Time is all I have, darling,” she said. “I was never named. I don’t know what I am, nor how I came to be. So I took my favorite name from those who have dared to visit me.” That tiny bone twirled between her fingers, and I heard it clink. “Payment, if you will.”
Claws.
Almost as long as Brey’s small blade, they curled from her fingertips—clear and therefore easily missed until it was too late. With those claws and teeth, it was no wonder she’d so easily torn my father’s men apart.
“Lovaila.”
“Lovaila,” Brey repeated. “Rolls off the tongue nicely.”
“Would you like to see my tongue, Majesty?” Her mouth curved. “It’s very long.”
I did my best to keep from making a face.
Meanwhile, Brey just smiled and said, “Lovaila was my great-great-grandmother. Did you meet her?”
“Briefly. Sprightly little thing who could swim like a fish. Her husband, not so much. He returned home without a hand. Tell me, can born vampires regrow their limbs?”
“Anything but the head,” said Brey.
As if pondering that, she hummed, then appeared to remember the agreement and hissed. “You distract me. Come forth, Majesties.” Her teeth met perfectly. “If you dare.”
I swallowed but walked forward when Brey did—until the water loomed a few steps from our boots.
Too close, instinct screamed.
But I stayed perilously still as the creature—Lovaila—scrutinized every inch of my husband.
Her silver tongue poked between her teeth as she tilted her head every which way. “Lovely indeed.” A glance was given to me. Her slim nose wriggled. “And I suppose you are not exactly hard to look at.”
Unable to help it, I scowled.
The creature tipped her head and laughed, a musical and haunting sound, before sobering so quickly that my spine steeled when she spoke.
“Your presence here has delivered me such wondrous gifts.” Eyeing all of said gifts, Lovaila peeled back her thin lips.
Triangular teeth joined in a gruesome smile.
“So in return, I shall let you do as you wish.”
Brey took my hand and drawled, “Most gracious of you.”
Lovaila tutted. “Not so fast, feline king.” Rolling onto her back, she ran her long hands down her mottled chest and smiled at the sky. “I didn’t say who.”
“Who?” I repeated.
“Are you an owl?”
I glowered. “Are you meant to be a mermaid?”
Brey squeezed my hand. “Forgive my wife.” Sweeping his fingers into his hair, still loosely bound, he chuckled. “She’s not a morning person.”
“You are vampires, so I suppose that is understandable.” Lovaila returned to her stomach. With her pointed chin on her hand, she stared only at me before asking, “What is a mermaid?”
“A siren of sorts,” Brey said. “Fictional.”
Her features twisted. “Fictional?”
The urge to tell her that she was nothing but a monstrous evil who was in our way pushed at my teeth. “Books,” I said instead. “Ever seen one of those?”
“I detect impatience,” she hissed. “Perhaps even hostility.”
“Again,” said Brey. “Simply not a morning person.”
Lovaila looked far from mollified. “That isn’t good for fun, and we’re supposed to be having fun.” An eerie tilt of her head. “You really ought to let me have some fun, Majesties.”
“Lovaila, excuse the assumption.” Brey made a show of looking behind us at the slowly charring vampires. “But we cannot help but notice that it looks like you’ve already had lots of fun.”
“Indeed, but they’re dying. Soon, they will be ash and bone, and I will be left all alone.” Her bone entered the lagoon with a quiet splash, and she huffed. “Again. Not even the gulls want to play with me.”
Shocked, I blurted, “You want a friend?”
“Friend?” Her forehead creased. “I want someone I can nibble on who won’t die so easily, Queen.
” As she looked at Brey, her expression lightened.
“Someone who cannot leave me.” Claws sank into the sand, and she pulled herself over it with a terrifying smile.
“I promise not to blemish that pretty face.”
I glanced at the beach hidden by the mangroves. “Why don’t you just leave this island?”
Lovaila’s feigned civility vanished. Her growled words leaped across the lagoon she stilled before. “Do you honestly think I have not tried that?”
Her rage caused the water to ripple, and a flock of birds took flight over the clearing.
As they soared toward the sea, Brey intervened. “I’m very much unavailable,” he said. “However, I might have some acquaintances I could introduce you to.”
My bones refused to unlock.
It hadn’t occurred to me that the monsters we’d encountered upon the isles might not be able to leave them. Of course, the giant spider couldn’t go anywhere. But the snagorns could fly. This mercreature could swim. It was as if Vexaya had trapped them with the wards, as guardians of sorts.
Which meant Lovaila wasn’t just lonely, she was fucking ancient.
I squeezed Brey’s hand and whispered, “I think it’s time to run.”
Lovaila heard me. “You’re welcome to try, but be warned…” She gave a low, menacing laugh. “A lack of legs doesn’t make me slow. In fact, I’m quite fast.” Casting her black eyes beyond us, she said, “Just ask one of your friends.”
“They are no friends of ours,” Brey said. “In all honesty, they came here to kill us and make it seem like we had simply failed to survive feeding this ward.”
Lovaila’s head cocked. “Interesting.”
Bubbling drew my attention to the lagoon.
Brey cursed and tugged me backward as something broke the surface.
Not something. Someone.
My father.
Reeds, coiled around his lower legs, pulled him free of the water. His arms were pinned to his back, likely by more reeds. I stared in horror at those banding tight between his lips and teeth. So tight, fresh blood darkened his russet beard.
Mere feet away from us, he coughed and writhed on the sand.
“Not long before you came to visit me, I caught this one slinking through the trees where you were hiding,” Lovaila said. “Friend or foe?”
I had no time to process that she’d known where we were while she’d been hunting my father’s men.
Brey didn’t hesitate. “Definitely foe.”
“Yet he is the sire of your fire-haired wife.”
“An unfortunate truth,” Brey said. “However, she cares nothing for him.”