Chapter 46
Forty-Six
Angie went limp once she sucked in her first breath of fresh air. Sunlight hitting her face disoriented her. The grips around her arms tightened, and she felt herself being dragged forward, the sea’s peaks smacking her face.
They stopped short, and she blinked, her vision clearing. They had reached the delineation between sea and land, before the water grew too shallow.
What was happening?
The beach stretched end to end with people, including Nick, Bàba, and Stefan.
Behind her, a large gathering of mer. There must have been over a hundred on each side facing off with each other.
The mer had their lances and tridents raised, and the people with their guns in hand.
Stefan must have informed them the mer were coming.
“Motherf—” Nick raised his shotgun, but Bàba moved to stop him.
“Beibei? No!” Bàba gaped, horrified when his and Angie’s eyes met.
Angie wanted to call out to Bàba, but her voice came out as a croak, her throat too scratchy and dry to produce a sound that would travel far enough to him. Instead, Angie tried raising a hand to greet her family, but the mers’ unyielding clutch stopped her.
The tension hanging in the air was so thick Angie thought it would suffocate her.
“Landwalkers! You will surrender to me, or lose her. Stealing from us once wasn’t enough?” The spurts of wind carried Serapha’s voice, amplifying it. In response, Bàba held up a loudspeaker.
“Let my daughter go, and I’ll consider it.” Angie heard the quiver and worry coating his voice. “Please.”
Nick whispered something to Bàba, and Bàba handed him the loudspeaker. Nick yelled into it. “Why should we surrender? After all the horrible things you’ve done? You stole from us. Starved us!”
The seas swirled around them and the skies darkened as Serapha’s face pinched as if struggling to hold in her rage.
“How dare you!” Serapha shouted. “You humans, all you do is take and destroy!”
The seas spun to form a vortex, sinking Angie and the mer into a shallow whirlpool. Angie pressed herself against the sentinel holding her, kicking her legs with whatever feeble strength she mustered up so she wouldn’t be dragged in the undertow.
“You think you can take our food? Our livelihood and think we would roll over and take it?” Nick yelled. “You’re wrong!” He walked closer to them, a swagger in his step. He leered at Serapha and sniggered. “We are all on this Earth to survive!”
Angie willed Bàba to speak up, but he appeared too shell-shocked.
Then Nick whispered in a dock worker’s ear, and they pulled out a revolver.
The whirlpool stopped, and Angie found herself swaying with the currents.
“Wait! No, stop!” Angie choked on her words and held up her hands, but the worker pulled the trigger, striking true at the sentinel that held Angie captive.
A funnel of blood spurted out from the sentinel’s chest, and she fell limp with a quiet splash.
Meanwhile, the dock worker who shot her raised his free arm in a cheer, and Nick patted him on the shoulder while Bàba looked on in horror.
“They want a fight? They will have one. Kill her! Then kill them all.”
Once Serapha gave the order, the second sentinel seizing Angie tightened his grip, making her feel as if her wrist bones were being crushed under his strength. He twisted her around to face him, and with a raging maelstrom in his bright umber eyes, he reared his arm back.
Angie gasped sharply.
His lance’s serrated tip ripped through her abdomen. Her eyes popped wide and her jaw dropped open. Pressing her hands to her stomach, she looked down. Her stomach leaked a slow trickle of blood, the saltwater in her wound rendering her speechless and dizzy with excruciating pain.
The sentinel who struck her pulled the lance out, and if the pain intensified any more, she was going to pass out. He reared back as if to strike her again, but a gunshot struck him in the head, and he fell dead before her.
“That’s it. You’re all dead, you filthy fish!” The fury in Nick’s voice rang in Angie’s ears.
Gunshots tore through the skies, striking the mer around her. Lances and tridents flew through the air, spearing the humans and bringing them to their knees. More people appeared on the beach, and more mer appeared from behind her.
Angie didn’t know where to go, trapped within the mer horde. Brine swarmed into her mouth, and she spat it out. Warm mer bodies trapped her, screams and shouts conglomerating into a dissonant melody.
Her abdominal muscles contracted over and over. With the mer occupied, she summoned what was left of her strength and dove underwater, only to become tangled in a mess of tails slapping at her.
A bullet pierced the surface, embodied in a trail of white and slowing down as it brushed the corner of her eye. She turned her face, wincing, keeping one hand pressed over the gaping wound in her gut. More blood bloomed in the water, and she let out a shocked, muffled cry.
Two dock workers’ bodies tumbled into the water and sank like they were weighed down by boulders. Beside her, another mermaid descended to her death.
Below them, gray and white shapes appeared, snatching up the dead and dying mer and humans, a veritable buffet. She knew her hand was coated in blood.
Please let the sharks stay busy, and leave her alone.
Angie swam past the feeding sharks and re-surfaced, the gunshots’ thunderous booms blasting her eardrums. The mer appeared to notice the sharks’ feeding frenzy below them, and swam closer to the shoreline.
More sentinels moved to Serapha’s side, speaking to her. Angie couldn’t make out their hushed words, except for one: tsunami.
The utterance of the word kept Angie’s body still, even as her eyes roved to absorb the sea around her. Watching for rising waves, disturbances in the water, the arrival of dark storm clouds.
Nothing.
Serapha was shaking her head no, sorrow in her eyes.
Another round of gunshots rang through the air.
The mer closest to her took the hits, their bodies jerking and warm blood splattering on Angie’s cheeks and neck. With a shaking hand, she wiped it off, numb to any revolt she would have normally felt. She put both hands to her still-bleeding stomach, pressing and pressing, numb to the pain now.
“Tiān, please stop. Stop,” she choked out, her throat catching from the salt stuck in it, and she let out a dry, hacking cough. She didn’t know how many had died. How many more had to die to end this?
Serapha and her sentinels swept their tails forward, moving the tides closer onto the surface. It reached the dock workers, gripping their knees. The water receded, pulling the workers out to sea.
The mer took their chance. Neither the mer nor the humans that went under came back up unless they floated lifelessly.
Shots resumed. Lances and tridents flew.
More blood, more dead bodies sinking into the water. A handful of humans fell, bodies collapsing into the sand and staining it with ichor.
With each fallen mer, Serapha’s face fell further and further, eyes widening until her eyelashes reached her eyebrows.
Angie bolted. Ducked underwater, repeatedly waving one arm over her head so she would descend beneath their tails and then swam in breaststroke, breathing hard and fast as she made for the shoreline.
It was so close. She could see it. Had to take advantage of the adrenaline spike.
She prayed that Serapha was dealing with the deaths of her people to give chase to a wayward human.
Hands grabbed her ankles and pulled her back, and they surfaced.
“Beibei!” Bàba cried out. Now that she was close enough to shore, Angie heard him clearly.
With a low snarl, Serapha grabbed Angie and pressed her back to Serapha’s chest.
Angie shrieked as Serapha’s scaly tail moved around her waist and chest, starting to squeeze. Tighter, tighter.
In one hand, she held a trident. Serapha pierced the small of her back, and a scream tore from Angie’s throat. Any deeper, and it would reach past her muscles to the organs beneath. Serapha moved the weapon—slow, methodical, torturous.
“A shame my sentinel didn’t finish the job. I’ll ensure your death is slow and painful so your family can see what happens to landwalkers,” Serapha hissed in Angie’s ear.
Angie’s lower back muscles screamed in agony, and she forced in her breaths.
She couldn’t take in enough air to retort something to Serapha.
Water swirled beneath her feet, binding her ankles together.
The trident peeled out of her back, and seawater seeped into her open wound.
Tears sprung to her eyes, the pain returning and setting her on fire.
Bàba hollered a string of words, but they sounded muffled.
Nick’s words were clearer, somehow. “Move! She’s close enough. I can get a clear shot.”
On the verge of blacking out now, a sound like an exploding bomb rang through the open skies, a supersonic crack as a bullet ripped in their direction.
A mer cut out from the water beside her, taking the bullet, and crumpled like a rag.
Time seemed to still for a moment.
Angie recognized the maroon tail. The beautiful, thick dark hair.
She mustered enough energy to cry out, reaching for him. Heart split in two. “No, no, no.”
Serapha let out an ear-shattering scream, her hands flying to her mouth and releasing Angie. Tears fell from Angie’s eyes, and she suppressed her sobs, taking the opportunity to swim to safety before Serapha could finish her.
As she swam, Angie kept her head above water, looking to her family, her colleagues. Nick had lowered his gun, his eyes wild with rage. He lifted his shotgun, poised to shoot again.
A flurry of lances sailed over Angie’s head and impaled Nick. His eyes wide, he stumbled backward and fell flat on his back, unmoving.
Mia shoved her way through the wall of dock workers. She shrieked and rushed to Nick, catching him before he crashed to the ground.
Had Mia been here the whole time?
More yells and screams. The dock workers kept shooting.
Hands grabbed Angie’s ankles, pulling her back to the mer horde so that she was side to side with a sentinel.
A water wall came up around the surviving mer, growing thicker and thicker.
An awesome, terrifying sight to behold. The mer swam closer and huddled together, keeping Angie close.
Some shouted to Serapha, and when no more bullets came through, she allowed it to lower.
“Stop this madness!” Serapha cried out.
Salt burned Angie’s eyes, and through the haze, Bàba raised an arm, signaling the others to stop. The mer had crept closer to the shore, and now, both sides stayed at a standstill.
“I do not want to see more death.” Serapha sounded breathless. “You landwalkers may take the fish you need to survive. Only what’s needed for survival. As long as you stop this bloodshed. Decline, and I will kill her. Just like you killed my son and my lifemate.” She put an arm around Angie’s neck.
A silence befell them as Bàba stood stock-still like a wooden doll, his eyes still bulging in horror. Standing as if in a trance, until Mia nudged him hard with an elbow and broke him out of it.
When he spoke, his voice quivered in a way Angie hadn’t heard before. “We agree to your demands, Mer-Queen. If you will release a few more fish to us so we can financially survive. And if you let my daughter go.”
Please, Serapha. Say yes. For your people. For your son.
Beside her, Kaden floated like a dead man, blood trailing from the gunshot wound she couldn’t locate. His abdominal area was fogged with thick, serosanguinous fluid.
No, she couldn’t lose him like this. She wouldn’t accept it. Had to come back for him.
Serapha spoke. “I agree. Take her back.” She pushed Angie into the arms of a sentinel, who escorted her to shore.
Once she met with sweet, sweet sand, gasping for air, she crawled ashore with her hands over her wounds.
Bàba rushed to her and lifted her by the arms until her feet were planted on the ground.
Behind them, the mer retreated into the sea, their forms disappearing one by one.
Angie’s throat grew thick, and she fought to stop another waterfall of tears tumbling from her eyes.
She couldn’t stop to grieve now, and wanted to be home.
The tears could flow then, and she could weep to her heart’s content.
Serapha and two mer sentinels surrounded Kaden, one sentinel cradling his upper body, the other cradling his tail.
They dove back underwater, and he too, disappeared with the rest.
Mia appeared from behind Bàba, her face ghostly white, one hand over her mouth. “Angie? Oh, you’re okay!” She grabbed Angie and hugged her tight, burying her face in her hair. Bàba put an arm around both of them, his body and hands trembling.
Angie licked her dry, chapped lips, cracked from dehydration. “Water. I need water.”
“Here.” Bàba held out a half-drunk bottle of spring water, and Angie swiped it from him, drinking it in one large gulp.
She felt alive. “Thank you,” she whispered.
“Why are you here?” Bàba asked Mia, his breath hitching.
“I couldn’t just stay home and hope that you would live. I stayed behind everyone. What if you all died?” Mia’s lower lip quivered. “Like Nick.”
She eyed Nick’s still body, blood still trickling from his mouth, and sank into a cross-legged sitting position beside him.
“Let’s get you home. It’s over.” He put an arm around Angie, holding her close to his side as they walked together. Then he stopped, looking behind him. “Doudou, are you staying?” Again, Bàba rubbed at the stubble on his chin, calling Mia by her childhood nickname, Little bean.
“I want to stay with him a little longer.” And with thickness in her words, she said, “Qǐng ānxí ba,” a wish for him to rest in peace, and hung her head.