Chapter 39
Thirty-Nine
Angie arrived at the docks at six in the morning the next day, two hours before her shift started. Early enough so she would have time to see Cyrus, but not too early that she would stumble across the night crew.
She’d overheard Nick and the other workers talking about a large outhouse in the docks’ center where they were keeping the trapped mer. It held voluminous tanks they once used as temporary holding places for their fish before selling them to the local grocery store and restaurants.
Ten steps from the outhouse door and Cam, the marine biologist, flung the door open and stormed out, wiping his glasses over and over on his shirt. “This is crazy. I didn’t sign up for this,” he was saying under his breath, rubbing his cheeks and forehead.
“Cam?” she called, but he didn’t turn around. “Cam!” He disappeared into the distance.
What freaked him out?
She shuffled back as soon as she opened the outhouse door.
Nick, flanked by two men, had the mermaid by her shoulders. The same one caught with Cyrus, and her lifemate yesterday.
He had just pulled his face away from hers. She looked anywhere but at the men, visibly shaking, her wild braids undone.
Tāmāde, Nick!
Angie ran for her brother-in-law. “What did you do?”
“Oh look, new girl’s here to save the day.” The stocky man drew his eyebrows together, and moved to block her path to Nick.
Angie recognized him and his blond friend with a weathered face and a grizzled beard. Ian and Marc, the same two who’d mocked her during one of their earlier meetings, and gotten kicked out by Bàba.
When in the eighteen levels of Hell were Ian and Marc allowed to come back? She hadn’t seen them since Bàba suspended them.
“Get out of my way.” She tried to sidestep around Ian, but Marc blocked her.
“Or what, you’re gonna fight me? There’s three of us versus you,” Ian sneered.
Angie glanced toward Nick. They didn’t like each other, but would he really fight her?
Before Angie could make another move, the merman beside them jumped out of his tank, his long arms reaching for Nick and clutching him around the throat.
He pulled Nick into his tank so Nick was submerged beneath him, his glare murderous and his knuckles turning white as he tightened his grip.
“Boss!” Ian lost interest in Angie as he and Marc rushed to the tank.
Good, maybe the merman would finally drown the life out of Nick.
But Nick fought, grabbing at the merman’s fingers and trying to pry them off. His chest still heaved with inhales and exhales, and Angie knew. He’d breathed in the magic from the terrified mermaid.
From next to him, the mermaid pulled herself halfway out of her tank, screaming in Renyuhua. She spoke so fast that Angie couldn’t understand a word she was saying.
Ian and Marc jumped to the merman’s tank and dragged the mer out of it, throwing him to the floor on his back.
He struggled briefly before flipping himself over.
“You try to kill our boss? You don’t get to live, scaly scum.
” Ian sneered, and after another brief glance at Nick, who gave him a firm nod, he pulled out his pistol.
“No!” Angie charged him. To do what, she couldn’t decide, but she could knock him off balance, knock the gun out of his hand. Anything so the mermaid wouldn’t have to watch her lifemate murdered.
Before she reached Ian, he shot the merman at point-blank range.
The mermaid’s mournful scream pierced through Angie’s ears and into the core of her being. The merman went still, lying facedown, his blood pooling on the ground.
Angie felt cold. The sound of the gunshot ringing in the enclosed space and resulting in the merman’s death stunned her into silence.
“You okay, boss?” Marc asked. “Really scared us back there. Thought you were a goner.” He and Ian helped Nick out of the tank, but Nick waved them off.
“I’m fine. Throat hurts a little, but that’s it.
I tried breathing underwater after you pulled that fucker off me.
And you guys, I could breathe. I could see.
It’s amazing.” He finally seemed to notice Angie.
“Angela. Is this what you’ve been hiding from us all this time?
Sneaky, sneaky.” He wagged a finger at her.
“Let’s go, boys. I have to get dried off.
We need to tell the others about this. And how the merman tried to kill me. ”
The three men brushed past Angie without another word, leaving her inside with the mer.
She walked to the mermaid’s tank, whose head and shoulders were above water, her shoulders racking with anguished sobs.
She dug her palms into the top of the tank, trying to hoist herself out.
It was too high, and she slid back into the tank, never taking her eyes off her lifemate.
Angie reached for her hands when she crawled back up, and drove her heels in, trying to pull her out.
The mermaid was waiflike in her frame, but she was heavier than she looked. After two more tries, pulling with all the strength she could muster, Angie’s arms gave out, and for the third time, the mermaid was left hanging partway out of the tank.
What could she possibly say to the mermaid? She wasn’t sure the mermaid would understand her. So she stood with her side to the tank, and took the mermaid’s cool hand in both of hers.
The mermaid didn’t fight. Didn’t try to pull her hand from Angie’s. She cried and cried, her tears forming a puddle around Angie’s work boots.
In the tank behind the mermaid, Cyrus hung still and limp, but the movement of his gills told Angie he still lived.
“I’ll come back for you,” she said to him. He didn’t stir.
Angie stayed until the mermaid’s tears had dried, and left when her shift started an hour and a half later.
Angie returned to the outhouse when her shift was over, and most of the crew had gone home for the night.
What she had seen that morning struck deep into her being.
The mermaid was on her back in the tank, unmoving, her gills flaring open and closed. The merman’s body was gone, leaving only a patch of dry blood caked into the wooden floorboard.
The sight of Cyrus broke Angie in two. He was conscious, but floated aimlessly in the water with his tail curled, the horizontal tank hardly large enough to fit his length. His eyes, once so full of life and fire were now flat and dead.
“Cyrus.” Angie put her palms flush against the tank’s glass.
Cyrus perked up when he saw her, and he wrapped his hands around the top rim of the tank, pulling himself up, his arms shaking, before they collapsed under him.
He folded his arms and rested his chin on them while taking in a large gulp of air.
“Angie?”
“Tiān, what did they do to you?” She scanned him up and down, stopping at small lacerations on his chest. “Did they—?”
“Since your people discovered how to steal our magic, a good ten or eleven of them came in shortly after I woke up. Cut Aurora,” he motioned to the trapped mermaid, “and I. Forced us to release the magic to them. They’ve all but drained the life out of me, and I imagine her as well.”
“That’s why you’re so pale?” He looked like he hadn’t rested in a hundred years. “I thought the magic only helped humans breathe underwater.”
“My brother did not tell you all of it, then? It is also part of our lifeforce.” Cyrus shook his head, his expression downtrodden.
“So, when Kaden gives me the magic, he’s impairing himself?”
What had she done, gleefully taking his magic every time they explored the undersea?
“No, when we give humans magic, only a miniscule part of us is lost.” Even his voice sounded more strained than she remembered.
“Each breath, or an equal amount of energy exerted or drained when we bring forth our Goddess’ gift, forces us to withhold from utilizing it again for a full tidesday to replenish it.
” He took in a shallow breath and parted his lips.
“You don’t have to explain. I think I get the gist of it. You should rest,” Angie said, but Cyrus kept going.
“The more we use, the more fatigued we grow until we’re so weak that we cannot move.”
Her heart ached, and she clasped Cyrus’ hand between hers. “I’m going to get you out of here.”
Aurora was heavier than Angie thought, and if she couldn’t manage to drag her out of the tank, then there was no chance in getting Cryus out either. After all, it took multiple men and women to pull Cyrus aboard in his net, she didn’t stand a chance alone.
Finally, Cyrus spoke, his words carried on labored breaths. “I appreciate the thought, but the shore is too far from here. I would help more had I the strength. I am sorry.”
“No, don’t be sorry. I’ll find a way to get you out, I promise, but I have to tell Kaden.
Tell him you’re alive, warn him that my people are using your magic.
” Her words came out faster and faster until they formed a verbal mountain.
After their time on the rocks, she’d agreed to meet Kaden tomorrow evening, but it was another day and a half that Cyrus might not have.
“Yes, you must.” He squeezed her hand. “The humans have left me alone for most of today, and I replenished a touch of my magic. I can give you what I still have so you can make it down to the queendom. My mother may not take too kindly to you being there, but try to find Kaden or Adrielle. Neither of them should be venturing out far.”
“Alright.” Angie grabbed a nearby step-stool and stood on it to be level with him.
“Do you know how to get there?”
Angie wrinkled her forehead. She’d been there once with Kaden, and had been dropped off by the dive boat, but she still didn’t think she could make it there on her own. “I have a general idea. Can you help me plot a path?”
“Of course.” Cyrus nodded. “I will give you directions toward the back of the palace, where less sentinels are likely to see you.”
With a focused ear, she listened to point by point of what Cyrus told her, committing his directions to memory until she could transcribe them to her dive compass later.
Cyrus motioned at her with his head. “Part your lips.”
She did, and he brushed his lips gently over hers, exhaling a slow trail of warm, steadying breaths into her mouth. “It’s done.” He turned his lips into a grim smile. “I’ll be here.”
Angie gave him a reassuring squeeze on his shoulder. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.” She checked her watch. Angie’s gaze trailed down to Cyrus’ tail before she left. It was no longer maroon, but a soft, subtle rose.