Chapter 9
Vodyan
O h, the heat of her skin. It wasn’t as scalding as when she wore the suit, but it was soft and warm, and I didn’t dare pull away even as the familiar tightness squeezed my throat. But I was more used to it now, so I let it be while I looked at my principal, who had come to me begging for conversation.
Of course, I folded at once. Avoiding her had exhausted all my reserves.
I spent the last few days doing my best to control the weird instincts and thoughts that had wormed their way into my head since the first day. I kept away, afraid more contact would bring in more confusion, but staying in my room when I heard Zoe just outside required a lot of discipline. I wanted to be close to her, and it made no sense.
What made even less sense was that I still wanted to make her feel safe and comfortable. When she cried yesterday, a leaden weight settled in the pit of my stomach. I almost couldn’t stand it, but I had no idea what to do. It wasn’t my place to comfort her, and yet, it was, too, because no one else was available .
But I didn’t even know how to start. When she fell asleep, I went in with a stupid, meaningless gesture I’d seen in human movies, covering her with a blanket. I had no idea how it was supposed to help.
And now she was here, needing me, and my strong will had frayed to nothing.
Carefully, like she was afraid of dislodging my limb, Zoe lowered her hand to rest on her knee. I didn’t pull back, though I should have, probably. Were we even supposed to touch outside of relocation?
Then again, what did I know? I didn’t really touch people. So I followed her cues, and since she didn’t protest, I kept my limb wrapped around her wrist. Shockingly, some of the tension vibrating under my skin eased at that, and I relaxed against the side of the pool, watching her.
“I am a coward. All I do is hide,” she grumbled, looking away.
I considered it for a moment and shook my head in the end. The membranes by my ears fluttered gently, catching Zoe’s eye. A small smile ghosted her lips, and for whatever stupid reason, I made the membranes flap a bit harder. Her smile grew until the tip of her canine peeked out.
“You hide because this is currently the surest, safest way to defeat him,” I said. “This isn’t cowardice, it’s a very smart, strategic move. Also, I read in your file he threatened you and your family, demanding you change your testimony. You didn’t. It takes courage to stand up to a murderer.”
“Oh, yeah,” she muttered. “Those threats were nasty. I couldn’t even delete those emails because they are now in evidence.”
She lowered her eyes, brushing my tentacle with the fingers of her free hand. My breath caught, but I didn’t say anything. Zoe ran her fingertips over my skin in gentle, gliding patterns, and my heartbeat picked up until it grew uncomfortable, but I didn’t pull back.
“I mean, I was brought up to tell the truth,” she said after a moment. “But even if I could lie convincingly in court, I still wouldn’t. He deserves to rot in jail. He’s a monster. ”
Her jaw set, her fingers stilling, though she still touched me. An electric shiver ran up that tentacle, and I was surprised to discover it wasn’t unpleasant.
“I suppose. He murdered the other two witnesses in a gory way,” I said, remembering the pictures.
There weren’t many, but their gruesomeness was memorable. The first witness, administrator Kowalski, was in jail when Carver’s people got her. They slit her throat and left her in a pool of blood. The other witness and the agents guarding him had been literally drawn and quartered, bloody pieces of their bodies scattered over an underground parking lot.
Zoe shrugged like it didn’t matter.
“Yeah, I mean, it is horrible. But, you know. He’s a mobster. That’s what they do. What I can’t forgive is buying and selling the lives of innocent children who have no one to protect them, no one to care. It’s beyond evil. I can’t let someone like that go unpunished.”
I jolted, shocked by her answer. My throat tightened even more, and when Zoe looked up, her glittering green eyes meeting mine, I felt naked and exposed. Like my past was in the room with us now, close to the surface and ready to be touched. Ready to hurt again.
“The file said you were in the children’s home when you overheard him making the transaction with the administrator,” I said, grasping for words while I pushed my raw wounds deep down, where they belonged. “But it didn’t mention why you were there. I only got the necessary info.”
She sighed, beginning to tap her fingers across my tentacle that pulsed around her wrist, getting drunk on her warmth. It felt mindless on her part, like playing with other people’s limbs was natural for her. For a sharp, biting moment, I wondered how many people she touched this way and if I could be the only one from now on.
It was a ridiculous thought.
“I volunteered there,” she said with a sigh, shifting to straighten out her leg. “Ever since I read about how neglected children develop differently, I wanted to help. It's just… It’s just so sad.”
She sighed again and looked up, her face tightening with passion. I couldn’t tear my eyes away.
“Do you know what happens when a baby cries and nobody comes to comfort it? It learns from the earliest moments of its life that its voice, its needs, its comfort and happiness don’t matter. Neglected children learn that no matter how loudly they cry, no one will help. Even worse, they learn they don’t deserve to be helped. So they stop crying. They stop asking. It’s heartbreaking.
“And if babies aren’t hugged, if they don’t get that physical contact early on, their emotional and social development is thwarted. It’s been studied and proven across most sentient species. We need touch. It’s literally a basic need, just like food and shelter, except it’s not included in any official guidelines. Ever since I learned that, I made it my life’s mission to hug the children no one else wants to hug. I’ve been doing it for six years now.”
Hug the children no one else wants to hug.
It was like she said a magic spell that broke through all my locks and armor that were already cracked and chipped from her touch.
Stripped of my protection, I was defenseless and raw, and I couldn’t stop it. I was about to break apart, and I couldn’t let her see it.
“Leave,” I snapped, yanking my tentacle back until it disappeared in the pool with a splash.
Zoe’s eyes widened with surprise. “What? But why do you…”
“Get out!” I roared, painful tremors running down my frame.
Memories popped open like overgrown slugs, flooding my mind with agonizing fury. Normally adept at keeping them hidden, I couldn’t stop them from coming forth now. I struggled to breathe as they assaulted me, some so vague and hazy, I wasn’t even sure what they were, and yet the feelings accompanying them were sharp and clear .
Desolation. Helplessness. Pain.
Unworthy.
Zoe scrambled to her feet and rushed to the door, sliding on the wet floor. She made it out with a stumble, slamming the door shut behind her. Once she was out, I submerged and released the scream of crushing fury that choked my throat. It rose to the surface in a stream of bubbles as I wrestled with my mind, trying to put my wounded past back in its place out of sight, but I couldn’t.
She broke something in me. Either her presence, her touch, her warmth, or all three made me incapable of restoring the calm equilibrium from before.
And so I was forced to relieve my worst experience. My body, though fully grown now, still couldn’t contain all the hurt and burning shame left over from when I was a child.
I was eight years old, and my grandfather kept me tied up in the land summer house he had on Isle Royale. He’d been at it for over a day already, and I was in agony. My dry skin cracked and bled, my mouth was parched, and my surface organs, barely developed at the age of eight, couldn’t keep up breathing the surface air.
I was dying.
Vodniks were born under water and spent most of their childhoods there, gradually getting used to functioning on land as they grew into adolescence. But my grandfather was determined to make me tough. He trained me for hours, depriving me of food and punishing me physically when I disappointed him.
Keeping me out of water for longer than a day was insane. Even a few hours was way too long for an eight-year-old.
I was in so much pain and so terrified, I cried that day, even though I knew better at that point. He abhorred all weakness, and he hated my tears above all else. And yet I couldn’t stop them. Maybe it was that instinct all children had, crying to get their needs met, like Zoe said. He hadn’t beaten it out of me completely yet .
But of course, crying was a mistake. When he heard my whimpers of pain and small, childish pleads to be let go, he lost it.
At first, he just beat me with his tentacles, their blows shaking me in the ropes. I stopped crying at that point, my training kicking in. I knew he’d go easier on me once I stopped sniveling, so I forced the tears back and just took it.
But he was beyond stopping at that point. He grabbed a wooden board and smacked me with it, screaming I would never amount to anything, that I was too weak to survive, would never be a man. He said I would die just like my mother, torn to shreds by lamias, and he was done watching me fail.
I was unworthy of his name and blood. I was a failure.
He left me like that. My entire body was enveloped in a crushing, cold pain, and my lungs gave out. My breaths came short and wheezing, my small torso spasming, my gills fluttering as I tried to get more air.
I would have died, but the beating he gave me turned out to be a blessing in disguise. The violent blows loosened the ropes, and after a few desperate, sluggish attempts, I was able to crawl out of them.
When I made it outside and into the water, I knew I would live. The first breath through my gills was the purest relief, and the way the cool water soothed my cracked, beaten flesh comforted me like the most loving caress.
Mother.
I lived on my own for some time after that, using all the skills my grandfather beat into me to survive. When I was nine, I made my way into Yeseera and asked to be allowed to attend school. Trying to integrate into society was a form of rebellion against my grandfather, who was still lodged deep under my scales.
When I was fourteen, I sought him out only to find his dead body trapped in one of his remote huts in the deepest parts of the lake. I hauled him out of there, up to the house on Isle Royale, and left him on land to rot and be dragged by wolves.
He didn’t deserve the sanctity of a grave in the deep, nor for his body to be composted into a fertilizer for shanta .
Now, I breathed through my gills, letting the water envelop me whole. It wasn’t the same as sinking deep in the lake, but it worked. Relief seeped slowly into my buzzing, aching limbs, and the gaping wounds inside me dulled to a low throbbing.
And yet, the sharp, acute pain in my heart didn’t lessen. It was grief for the childhood I hadn’t had. I thought it was normal that I didn’t get any warmth after my mother died—it was just the way it was, and my grandfather always said I should be grateful he took me in, because otherwise, I would have ended up in the system.
But listening to Zoe, I suddenly beheld a different possibility. Maybe orphaned children could get those crumbs of warmth, too. Maybe it could have been different.
I emerged with a growl, splashing water onto the tiles. I was forty, for fuck’s sake. It was time to let go of the past, yet no matter how hard I tried, the past wouldn’t let go of me.
It took me an hour to bring myself more or less to normal, though I was still raw and shaken. Fury buzzed under my scales, alive and vicious, but I felt guilty, too.
The hurt in Zoe’s green eyes when I screamed at her was like a thorn lodged in my gut. I wasn’t sure how to go about it, but I knew one thing. I wanted her forgiveness.
When I came out, resigned to offer my apologies to her closed door, she surprised me by smiling as soon as she saw me.
She sat on the couch, her legs folded, and didn’t seem to be doing anything. The TV was off, and there was no book in her hand. I wondered if she’d waited for me, and it made me feel strangely hot.
“How are you feeling?” she asked when I froze in the doorway, unsure what to do.
My plan hadn’t even taken into account the possibility that she might be friendly like this. In my experience, it took much less to offend a woman than what I just did. I knew. I’d tried dating in my late teens and it was a disaster. Vodnik girls hated me because I wouldn’t talk as much as they wanted or let them touch me in certain settings or circumstances. I grew accustomed to the idea I wasn’t made for relationships.
“Better,” I said, watching her intently to understand what was going on.
She nodded, her smile still bright and kind. “I’m glad. It seemed like something very serious happened, to make you lash out like that. What do you need now? Food? A nap? Something to take your mind off things?”
“What are you doing?” I asked instead of answering her questions, which baffled me infinitely.
I had never considered I might take a nap after a breakdown. What I’d just done was a sign of weakness. I didn’t deserve comfort or a treat, I just had to get myself together and be tougher the next time around.
And how did that strategy work out for you until now?
I ignored the small, inquisitive voice in my head, because Zoe answered my question, still smiling with patience.
“Trying to offer you comfort after a difficult experience,” she said easily, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.
“I screamed at you,” I said, confused.
For a moment, I was angry. Was she playing some kind of weird game? Was this a trick? Yet I couldn’t see what sort of game that would be. What would she even achieve? I had no idea.
Zoe sighed and nodded, her smile growing fainter. “Yes, you did, and I didn’t like it. I’d feel better if you apologized, but I know enough not to take it too personally.”
“I’m sorry,” I blurted out at once. “I really am. I apologize. That’s why I came out.”
Her smile brightened until she grinned at me with her cute teeth, her eyes sparkling with pleasure. She bounded off the couch and dashed to my side, stopping just in front of me. Her smile softened as she looked up, offering me her hand.
“Handshake? I’d hug you, but I’m not sure you’d be comfortable with that, so…”
“I would,” my mouth said before my brain had time to process what it meant.
“Yeah?” she grinned, bouncing on the balls of her feet. “That’s awesome, because I miss hugging people so freaking much!”
Next thing I knew, she was on her tiptoes, her arms around my waist, her face pressed to my chest. My heart launched into a wild rhythm, and I knew she’d hear it thudding against my ribs, but the sudden pleasure of having her pressed so close overrode my desire to pull back.
Around us, my tentacles twitched and jerked with the urge to wrap around her and bring her closer, but I didn’t act on it. Instead, I focused on my arms. They were by my sides, hanging uselessly, so I put them around her with hesitation.
It felt weird to stand with her like that, feeling her warmth, breathing in her scent. She smelled like soap and canned peaches, and I found the combination captivating. Zoe didn’t pull back, and I didn’t, either, breathing her in and trying to understand why it felt so good.
After a few minutes, I was shocked to discover the gaping abyss in my chest slowly shrank and filled with warmth. Normally, I would be stuck with that pain for days to come, forcing it down and down until it was buried deep enough.
Yet now, it melted. Just like that.
“This is nice,” Zoe sighed, squirming closer. “You’d be so handy to have around on hot summer days with how cool your skin is.”
Her voice was husky and mellow, and suddenly, an electric shiver raced down my spine, making me straighten.
The way she sounded made me think of sex, and my body reacted. With eagerness .
Let go , I told myself, even as Zoe gently stroked my back, sending bursts of pleasure into my brain. It felt too good, and I didn’t understand why. We’d been close that first day, too, but all I felt then was a choking discomfort. Was I getting used to her?
Was familiarity the reason why my cock warmed in its slit, beginning to harden?
It was profoundly wrong to feel that way about her, and I forced myself to let go, even though my tentacles trembled with the need to slither under her clothes, and… No.
When Zoe looked up, her face flushed, her lips redder than before, I had to blink a few times to make myself focus. I vaguely remembered a part of my training that taught us how to handle situations like this. I’d scoffed at the time, so fucking certain it would never happen to me.
And now, here I was. In lust with a client.