Chapter 13
13
“W hat exactly do you have in mind?” I was treading water, gripping Nancy in one hand which meant that my swimming was not as effective as it could have been.
“You have to trust me, there isn’t time!” Corb said, and damn it, he must have known that would convince me.
I nodded.
He swam toward me, and before I could consider what ‘trusting him’ might entail, the siren kissed me.
There was no heat in it, no lust, no want or need. But there was magic, and something inside of me sparked to life—a connection to his siren magic and to the very water.
I gasped and pulled back. “What did you do?”
“I woke up that part of you that has always sung to me. Now, let’s swim!” He grinned, a manic gleam in his eyes, and dove below the water.
“Shit,” I whispered. Then I put Nancy in my mouth, gripping the blade with my teeth, and dove beneath the water.
It was like going to the optometrist and having them say lens one or lens two, if lens one was functional blindness and lens two was perfect sight. It was like peeling off a set of blinders. Under water I could clearly see the creatures floating along, swimming hard in various directions.
Big and small, some lean like whips, others thick like trees, they were everywhere. Hanging onto Nancy, I could see them though for what they were. Shadows—the essence of demons—inside the different creatures, searching for souls to drag down.
So now I could see and that was both good and bad. But better than that, there was no need to hold my breath. I didn’t know if somehow, I was absorbing oxygen through my skin or what, but whatever the case, I didn’t feel the need to breathe. I would take it for the boon it was.
I did my best not to look too closely at the depths below, because when you peered hard enough into the dark, sometimes it looked back. So, minding my own business, I swam after Corb, keeping my eyes on his long legs. Each stroke of my arm took me strides further than if we’d been on the surface. Except I still didn’t know how we were supposed to find a door from here.
I caught up to Corb, and we swam side by side. I looked around, trying to find anything that could serve as a door.
Flutter-kicking along was great and all, but we needed some direction. When I glanced at Corb, he had a grin on his face. This was good for him, sure. I touched his arm and he slowed, faced me, and his eyes popped wide. He grabbed me and dragged me down as something sleek and powerful whooshed over our heads.
I would have thought it was a shark, but I wasn’t sure. There was a mouth full of teeth, some tentacles near the mouth, and several stalks of eyes that swiveled around to follow us. A shark body, mashed together with a bunch of other creatures.
Like a galloo born of the sea instead of the land.
Damn peachy.
Corb tugged me along. We swam hard, going straight down, and the shark thingy darted down toward us. We dodged and dived. I grabbed my knife and managed to slice a thin cut along the beast’s side, opening it right up, deterring it for long enough for us to get away.
But, you know, things can’t always be that simple.
All the blood in the water? Yeah, bad news.
As we swam away from the wounded monster, other monsters started homing in on the scent of blood. Ducking and dodging was not as easy as it sounds in the water, and if not for Corb helping, I would have ended up in more than one mouth that was gaping wide as they went toward the smell of blood.
Corb pointed up, and we swam to the surface again. We broke through, but I couldn’t shake the thought of all those monstrous things beneath us. Not a guppy amongst them.
“They’ll be busy. This is our chance to find a door.” He spun slowly. “Can you see anything?”
I shook my head. “Not above the waves. Can you use your power to calm them?”
His face tightened. “Maybe. If I do, and the demons sense what’s happening, it will be like ringing a dinner bell.”
I blew out a breath. “Then we need to be fast. Get our sightlines, find Kink and Robert, and swim for all we’re worth.”
He gave a slow nod before reaching out and taking my head. “Okay. Hang on.”
Again, there was no heat, no lust as he held onto my hand. Before, just touching him was enough to elicit those sensations.
Just…I didn’t know what he was trying to be anymore. Maybe this was him being a friend?
My thoughts derailed as he pulled on his power, and it sparked that part of me that called to him, bolstering his strength. The waves dropped as suddenly as if they’d been controlled by a switch he’d flipped. I spun in a circle with him. “There! To the left!”
I didn’t know if it was north, south, or what, but it was definitely on my left. “Swim!” Corb yelled.
We dove underwater in time to see every damn monster that had gone after a free meal coming for us .
I swam as hard as I’d ever swum, run, or done anything in my life. I gripped Nancy in my teeth again, and he kept up a running commentary. Helpful like that he was.
“You got two maw mouths, a snaggle shark, thirteen gilkens, and Lucifer knows what else is down there. It’s a writhing mass of nasties! Just keep swimming, girly. I don’t want to get shit out of a maw mouth and left on the bottom of the Darkest Ocean for eternity.”
I would have laughed if I’d had any laughter left in me. Because that did sound like a pretty terrible existence. I mean, who would pick up a blade from the bottom of the ocean here? Nobody.
When my body wanted me to stop, I thought about my friends depending on me. I thought about Crash waiting for me. I thought about everyone who believed in me. I pushed on, past the limits of exhaustion into a numbing motion.
Nancy…well, he kind of helped. “You’ve left most of them behind. Keep on, girly. Just the maw mouths coming now. Everything else has given up, and maw mouths get tired, so you just keep swimming your hard ass off.”
The water around us changed color suddenly, going from the inky dark to a lighter shade of gray.
“There!” Corb yelled, his word clear even through the water, as we drew close to what had to be a rock wall.
A rock wall that shot straight down into the ocean. We breached the surface, which slowed us down.
But we had to.
Or did we? I grabbed Nancy from my mouth so I could speak.
“Under! Swim hard for the wall, then we split in either direction!” I yelled and stuffed the blade into my thigh sheath.
I didn’t wait to see if Corb listened. I just knew it was the chance we had to take. Back under the waves, I picked up speed again, going hard toward the wall.
“The maw mouth is on your ass, girly!” Nancy yelped. “Hurry!”
Hurry.
Like it was easy.
I gritted my teeth, swimming with all I had. The rock wall was right in front of me.
I pushed off the wall with my hands and feet, driving myself to the right with a big push.
The maw mouth didn’t slow, and slammed its face into the rock wall, mouth open. The screeching of the rocks being torn apart, followed by the wailing of the maw mouth, was so overpowering that I shot to the surface to protect my ears.
I grabbed the rock wall and pulled myself up, using what tiny hand holds I could find, working myself up and out of the water. “Corb?”
“It worked!” He waved from down the left side of the wall. That was why the sound had been so bad. Both maw mouths had hit at the same time.
Double the fun.
“The door. Can you get to it?” I could just see the edge of the door, pale yellow now that I was closer. Yellow. What would that be? Fire maybe?
“I think so. You?”
“Oh, yeah, sure, easy peasy,” I yelled back. “Slick like gator snot, you know.”
“No, and I’d rather not.”
I laughed and worked my fingers into the rock wall, continuing to make my way to the right, toward the door.
Now, I’d never rock climbed before. But let me tell you, the fear of falling back into the water was enough to make me ignore the pain in my fingers and toes as I clung to the surface in any way I could.
By the time I reached the bottom edge of the door, I was wishing for the stairs. “A million stairs, I’d do ten million instead of this,” I muttered as I gripped the wood ledge. And looked up. There was no way I’d be able to pull myself up over the lip of the door. “Corb? How’s that upper body strength going for you?”
“Shit. Can you use the rock to climb higher? There is nothing over here.” He was next to me on the other side of the door. I looked up.
“No, there’s nothing here either. On purpose, I’m sure,” I clung there a minute. “I have a pretty good hold, can you use my leg as a boost?”
His left eyebrow went up. “You want to lift me up there?”
“I’m not sure I can pull you up if I go first,” I tried to shrug, but that made my right hand slip. “Just do it. From there, maybe we can see Robert or Kinkly. We aren’t leaving without them.” Now that we were out of danger, my worries went to my friends. They were also out there somewhere, surviving the monsters. I refused to think otherwise.
His eyes softened. “Yeah. Sure.”
I didn’t like how he’d said that, not one bit. Because it felt like he was saying they couldn’t have made it. Which was unacceptable. I could not lose more friends here.
Corb shimmied over to me, gripped the bottom ledge, and then used my bent knee as an extra ledge, boosting himself up into the doorway. “Give me a minute to catch my wind.”
“Yeah, well, how about ten-second rest?” I said as I struggled to hang on. “I’m losing my grip.”
“Right.” He bent, grabbed both of my wrists, and pulled me up and onto the ledge without much effort.
I stumbled and used the edge of the door for balance, doing my best not to lean on him. “Thanks.”
“Sure.”
Awkward?
You betcha. I turned around and looked out across the water. It was still calmer than it had been when we’d started, but dark waves trembled as if they were trying to build up speed.
“You look over there,” I pointed to the left and then turned to face the right side of the water.
They had to still be out there. I refused to believe we’d lost Robert and Kinkly. Refused.
I scanned the water, eyes straining to spot a raft or a head bobbing in the water. The minutes slid past. I didn’t even have to look at the timepiece to know that I was losing time we didn’t have.
My heart thundered in my chest. We’d have to leave them behind. I bit the inside of my cheek, grief threatening to overwhelm me. That dark place I’d gone when I’d first lost Crash roared up like a maw mouth inside of me. Would we be able to come back and get them later? I had a feeling the answer was no—Robert was no fae, and Kinkly was no fairy king. If we left them now, that would be it for my friends. They’d be trapped here forever.
“Wait!” Corb swung a hand and smacked me right in the boob. “I see something!”
I pushed his hand away and stared out into his part of the ocean. “Where?”
“Close to the wall, I think it’s Kinkly!” Corb yelled. “KINK!”
I saw her then, a glimmer of her autumn colors catching the low light. “KINKLY!” When I screamed her name, she looked up, her wings beating furiously but so dangerously low to the water. “Why is she flying so low?”
And where was Robert?
I didn’t want to ask that question. I couldn’t . He was my friend and had been through thick and thin with me.
“She’s…I think she’s carrying something?” Corb leaned over the edge of the door. “Shit, it’s Robert dangling off her. She can’t get him out of the water, he’s too heavy for her!”
I blinked and saw what he was pointing out. Kinkly was sort-of carrying Robert, but his lower half was being dragged in the water even as he tried to use the edge of the wall to propel himself along.
We cheered them on, and after a few minutes of swearing and sweating on all parts, they were with us on the door ledge. It was precarious, but I didn’t care. I hugged them both, clinging to them, relief outweighing anything else. “I thought I’d lost you!”
“We thought we’d lost you too!” Kinkly cried. “I’m so glad I can hug you now!”
“Me too!” I laughed and sobbed at the same time. The grief monster inside of me was pushed down once more, and hope replaced it. “You ready?”
Crammed into the small space, we turned to face the door. Yellow like the sun. “Any guesses?”
“I’d say fire,” Robert put his hand to the door.
Nancy grumbled. “Get ready to get hot.”
That was still my guess too. “Here we go.”
Fire. We were so na?ve that it would be that simple.