Chapter 16
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
RILEY
Itried all of their phones multiple times and got no answers. I was so angry that they weren't telling me what was going on that I nearly broke my phone slamming it on the counter.
"Is someone going to tell me what the fuck is going on?" Aiden was sitting at the kitchen table, nursing a cup of coffee despite it being nearly ten o'clock.
I, of course, hadn't listened to them and we'd stayed at the townhouse. Aiden's parents wouldn't have let us stay there anyway, and I wanted to be close to the water.
"It's better if you don't know." Ivy opened the refrigerator for what must have been the tenth time, hoping food would magically appear inside.
"Ivy gets to know but I don't?" Aiden crossed his arms. "I'm hurt."
I would have told Aiden everything in a heartbeat if I didn't know for a fact that he'd freak out. The last thing we needed at the moment was for him to have a mini meltdown about me having a tail and Poseidon being real.
"I'll tell you everything. Just not tonight." He didn't like my answer, but his disappointment was the least of my worries.
There was a knock on the front door and Ivy and I stared at each other before I ran to it and looked out the peephole. I threw open the door to find a soaking wet Olivia.
"Girl, you are in so much trouble." I grabbed her arm and pulled her inside. She was shivering and hugging herself. "Where have you been?"
I grabbed the blanket that was thrown over the back of the couch and wrapped it around her. She started crying, and I put my arm around her.
Aiden busied himself on his phone as Ivy grabbed my phone off the counter and we led Olivia upstairs to find her a pair of dry clothes. She hadn't said a word yet, and I worried about what had happened over the past hour she'd been missing.
"I'll find her something to wear." Ivy went into my closet that still had a few clothes.
I dialed Jax's number again and it went straight to voicemail. "Your brother isn't picking up." I sent him a text letting him know Olivia had come back. "Where did you go? Are you okay?"
I took the blanket and dropped it to the floor, looking her over to make sure she wasn't injured. She nodded and kept her arms wrapped around her stomach. Did her stomach hurt? Maybe all the land food and candy throughout the week had taken its toll.
"I found some old yoga pants and a hoodie." Ivy came from the closet and dropped the clothes. "Oh my God. Riley. There's a fucking tentacle."
"What?" I moved around to see behind Olivia. "Holy fucking fucker!" I yanked down Olivia's pants and she let out a strangled cry as she fell to the ground. "Help me!"
We got her shoes, socks, and pants off as fast as possible. The shift she was going through seemed to hold off until her clothes were off, but once they were, her legs morphed into tentacles and six others grew from her hips.
"What do we do?" Ivy fell back on her ass and was breathing heavily. "Should I turn on the shower? Should I call the police? She has fucking tentacles!"
"Shh!" I jumped up and locked the bedroom door. "We need to be calm."
I was anything but calm. Olivia was examining her tentacles and then started laughing before bursting into more tears. "I'm a freak."
"It's not that bad." Who was I kidding? It was bad. She had eight tentacles that were the same coloring as a triton, and the rest of her looked human. "Here, let's call your brother, or hell, let's call your dad."
I picked up my phone and she grabbed it with a tentacle, throwing it against the wall. It was such a hard throw it left a dent. She cringed. "Sorry, I didn't realize they were that strong."
Ivy stood against the wall, as far as possible from Olivia. "What does this mean? You're like... Ursula."
"Ivy!" I shut my eyes and took a calming breath. I could handle this. "We need to get you to water, right?"
"I mean... I think? That's what caused this. I spilt some water on my leg and then ran and hid on the side of your house."
"But you've been in the water and this didn't happen." It had to be a coincidence that a little spilt water would cause her to turn into a creature from a science fiction movie.
Olivia had stopped crying but had a deep frown. "I'm going to kill that motherfucker for doing this to me."
"That's the spirit!" Ivy moved against the wall toward the door. She was still within tentacle grabbing distance despite how hard she was pressing against the wall. "I'm just going to go get Aiden to leave, okay?"
She left us and Olivia looked up at me. "I think I need the ocean water, not tap water. How am I going to get there?" Her brows drew together in thought. "Can you carry me?"
"I can try." She was small, so it was possible I could carry her the few blocks to the ocean. Maybe there was something I could wheel her with. "We need to cover your, uh, tentacles."
I grabbed a blanket and threw it over my shoulder before bending to pick her up. I decided to scoop her up like a baby, my arms under her tentacles. What should have been a move that threw out my back was actually nothing. Had I grown muscles?
"You're strong." She grabbed the blanket and spread it over her lower half. "Riley?"
"Yeah?" I adjusted her in my arms and walked to the door with her. She really was light, and I didn't know if it was because I was stronger or because her tentacles weren't heavy. They had to be though, there were eight of them.
"What if they kill me?" Her bottom lip trembled, and she distracted herself by leaning over to open the door for me.
I wasn't sure what the tritons would do once they saw her, but there was no use in her freaking out. "They won't. This isn't your fault."
I stopped at the top of the stairs and listened carefully. Ivy said she was going to get Aiden to leave, and I wondered if she had too. It was a lot to take in. Her best friend had a tail, and now there were tentacles growing out of a teenage girl.
Surprisingly, Ivy was sitting on the couch when we got to the bottom of the stairs. "We can take my car."
She grabbed her keys and mine, and we rushed out into the crazy weather that rivaled what I had seen on television during hurricane coverage. The wind had already destroyed the Halloween decorations, and across the street, a fence was down. It was the worst storm I'd ever experienced.
A giant crack of lightning hit something not far from the townhouse and the streetlights went off, dousing us in darkness. I climbed into the back with Olivia and started taking my clothes off.
Ivy looked in the rearview mirror. "What are you doing?" She drove toward the beach parking lot. I hoped it had cleared out from the event that had gone on.
"I'm going with her. I can't just leave her unprotected." I slid off my costume and covered my chest as I took off my bra. "It will be fine."
Olivia was staring out the window at the rain and I wondered what must have been going through her head. Were there even other creatures like her?
We got to the beach and my heart sped up seeing how far the tide had come in. Even at high tide it didn't reach where it currently was, which was a few feet from the parking lot.
I looked around, making sure no one was around, and then opened the car door, stepping out. The rain stung as it hit my bare skin and I scooped Olivia into my arms.
"Where should I wait for you?" Ivy had to practically yell for me to hear her over the wind and crashing waves.
"Go home. I'll find a phone when I'm on land again!" I gave my best friend one last look and then ran to the water.
I waded out far enough where the waves were getting gnarly and put Olivia down. She stripped out of her shirt, revealing breasts that were covered like mine with patches of scales.
She scooted along until a wave caught her, and then I lost sight of her. I dove into a wave just before it crashed, and it was like hitting a frozen wall.
A surge of panic took hold as I went under and still had my legs. I bobbed to the top just as another wave crashed and I somersaulted under the water. Why wasn't I shifting?
I clamped down on my panic and surfaced, taking a deep breath. I turned back toward the shore and started swimming as the next wave crashed into me. I hit the sand underneath me and my body buzzed with the shift.
"Olivia?" I couldn't see her anywhere in the churning water.
I swam out farther where the water was still rough but the waves weren't sending sand and white foam everywhere. She was floating, looking down at herself.
I blinked. Were her tentacles longer now? I approached cautiously and she looked up at me, her eyes shining silver.
"Umm, are you okay?" Of course she wasn't okay. Who would be okay if it looked like they had tentacles growing out of their vagina?
Her head turned to look out to sea. "He's here."
She took off without waiting for me, and I cursed before following. I didn't know exactly where I was going as I cut through the water, but I knew the general direction of the Pacific City by process of elimination.
Even if Olivia hadn't seemed to know where she was going there was no reason to worry because the farther we got away from shore, the more I felt an intuitive pull.
Olivia seemed to know exactly where she was headed as I caught up to her. She looked over at me, her face blank.
"Olivia?" She didn't respond to me and turned her head back in the direction we were headed.
A submarine came into view and my heart sank. If he was parading around in a submarine, the tritons had no hope. I'd seen what it was capable of, and if the triton's defenses didn't stop it before, they weren't going to stop it now.
Olivia headed straight for it and I swam in front of her, stopping her. "Olivia, he's the enemy. He's killed tritons."
She stared at me and then a tentacle came out of nowhere and wrapped around my waist. I pushed at it, trying to remove it as it tightened. She continued to swim next to the submarine, which was already moving. It was like it had waited for us.