Chapter 9
Nerida
There is no darkness in the dry place. Darkness is a comfort—the velvet weight of the deep trench, the embrace of the abyss where I was born. This is not that. This is a blinding, static gray.
I’m floating in a void where the current is dead.
My skin, once a semi-permeable membrane that tasted the salt and silt of the world, has turned into a prison of hardened clay.
I can feel the fissures spreading across the delicate flesh of my shoulders, spiderwebbing down the ridge of my spine, snapping the microscopic fibers of my being one by one.
The air is a thief, a greedy, invisible parasite.
It steals the moisture from my lungs, the slick protective film from my eyes, and the very song from my throat.
I’m becoming dust, a statue of ash, crumbling in an empty museum.
Time is losing its meaning. There is only the sensation of shrinking, of my essence evaporating into the dry, hostile atmosphere. I try to reach out with my senses, to find the electromagnetic hum of living things, but my reception is dead. The world is silent.
Then, a vibration. Distant, distorted, like a whale call vibrating through miles of heavy silt or the thrum of a ship’s engine far above the thermocline.
Wake up.
It’s a command, desperate and terrified.
Then, the universe explodes.
It isn’t water that hits me. It’s liquid lightning, the concentrated essence of the crushing dark, the heavy, metallic taste of the Mariana, distilled into a shock so potent it feels like a physical blow. Jack dumps the salt.
The reaction is instantaneous and violent.
It’s a chemical shock, a collision of elements that should not exist in this surface world.
My back arches off the porcelain before my mind can register the command to move.
My spine bows to the breaking point, every vertebra popping as the energy slams into me.
A scream tears from my throat, a raw, jagged shriek of agony.
The water hisses, churning around me. I open my eyes to a harsh, hyper-clear reality. The bath is no longer water; it has turned a violent indigo, heavy and slick as motor oil.
It doesn't soothe the cracks in my flesh. It invades them. The liquid sinks into my exposed nerves, igniting a searing, chemical burn that tears through my body, burning the sickness out of me from the inside out.
I thrash, my legs slamming against the sides of the tub with a sound like a gunshot, splashing the heavy, blue fluid onto the tiled walls. Fire strips the sickness from my cells, a scouring agony that leaves me gasping.
“Breathe!” Jack’s voice. It cracks with panic and smells of fear.
I gasp, my gills flaring wide, ribs expanding until they threaten to crack.
I suck in the moisture-laden air rising from the tub.
The burning stops as quickly as it began, replaced by a rush of cold, intoxicating power.
It’s as if the crushing pressure of the deep ocean over a thousand atmospheres has suddenly clamped around me, holding me together and knitting the fissures in my skin back into seamless perfection.
I look down at my arms. The gray ash is sloughing off in great, dissolving sheets. It swirls away into the indigo water like dead scales. Beneath it, the new skin is emerging, pearlescent, slick, and harder than diamond.
Then the lights snap back on, and my bioluminescence detonates in an answering flash.
Patterns of azure, electric violet, and deep, warning red race across my torso, swirling down the length of my legs.
They pulse in time with the frantic, sledgehammer rhythm of my heart.
The bathroom, dim and shadowed only a moment ago, is bathed in the strobe-light intensity of my resurrection. I’m a neon storm in a porcelain box.
I sit up, the indigo water cascading off my shoulders in thick, heavy sheets.
The weakness is gone. The dryness is a fading nightmare.
In its place is a vibrating, humming energy that makes my fingertips twitch.
The salt has done more than heal me—it has supercharged me and awakened the apex predator that usually sleeps beneath the surface of my consciousness.
Jack is kneeling by the tub. He looks wrecked.
His chest is heaving, his flannel shirt is soaked through and plastered to his skin.
His hair is matted to his forehead by the rain.
He smells of ozone, wet denim, and a terror so profound it tastes sweet on the back of my tongue.
He’s staring at me, his eyes wide, his pupils blown, reflecting the alien, shifting patterns of light dancing on my skin.
He went into the storm for me. He faced the wind that breaks trees to bring me the ocean in a jar.
The realization hits me harder than the salt. The monster in me, the ancient biological imperative that categorizes all other beings as prey or threat, suddenly reconfigures. The tumblers in my brain click into a new alignment.
The pain of the healing transmutes instantly into adrenaline.
My blood runs hot, boiling beneath the cool surface of my skin.
And then, just as quickly, the adrenaline boils over into a hunger that has nothing to do with food.
It’s a starvation of a different kind, a need to consume him, to merge with him, to verify his existence with every inch of my recovered body.
“You saved me,” I whisper. My voice is no longer a dry rasp. It’s a chord, resonant and full, vibrating with the sub-harmonics of the deep. “Again.”
Jack lets out a shaky breath, his hand still gripping the white rim of the tub so hard his knuckles are white. “I thought… I thought I was too late. You looked like stone, Nerida. You looked dead.”
I look at his mouth. I remember the taste of him from before, but that is a gentle memory. This is different. I don’t want gentle. I want to devour. I want to feel the heat of his blood and the beat of his heart against my own.
“You are never too late,” I purr, the sound rumbling in my chest.
I don’t ask or wait for permission and reach out, my wet hand shooting forward with the speed of a striking eel, gripping the front of his soaked flannel shirt. The fabric is heavy, sodden with the storm, but I don’t care.
I yank.
Jack lets out a startled yelp as I haul him off his knees. With a splash that sends a tidal wave of indigo water over the floor, I drag him over the porcelain lip and into the tub with me.
He lands hard, half on top of me, his legs tangled with mine. The water rises dangerously high, sloshing violently, instantly soaking him. The tub is cramped, a confined space meant for one, now holding two beings of different worlds.
“Nerida…” He gasps, spluttering as he tries to find his footing in the slick, shifting environment. He tries to push up to give me space.
“Quiet,” I command.
I sit up, water streaming from my hair, and straddle his lap.
The water is cooling, but my skin is burning hot, a furnace of biological light and heat.
I grab his shirt collar with both hands and rip it, buttons pop, pinging off the tiles like hail.
The sound is sharp and satisfying. I tear the wet fabric apart, desperate to feel the skin beneath and remove the barrier between his warmth and my need.
“Nerida, wait,” he stammers, his hands coming up to grip my waist. His touch is electric, sending sparks skittering across my scales. “You’re… you were dying a minute ago. You need to rest.”
“I am not dying,” I growl, pressing my chest against his, flattening my breasts against the hard wall of his pectorals. “And now I am alive. Make me feel it.”
I don’t give him a chance to argue, crushing my mouth to his.
It isn’t a gentle kiss but a collision. It’s a claiming. I taste the salt on his lips, the rain on his face, and the sudden spike of his arousal. He tastes like survival and the shore meeting the tide.
Jack groans, a low, guttural sound in his throat that vibrates against my sternum.
His hesitation shatters under the weight of my demand.
His rough and callused hands slide up my slick back, gripping me hard enough to bruise.
He pulls me closer, eliminating the water between us until there is only friction.
I grind down against him, the hard ridge of his desire pressing against the soft, sensitive scales of my lower abdomen. The sensation sends a shock wave through my nervous system, making my lights flicker wildly, strobing from blue to intense violet.
“Please,” I breathe out against his mouth, my hands tangling in his wet hair, pulling his head back to expose his throat. “Now, Jack. Now.”
He doesn’t need to be told twice. He fumbles with his belt, his movements frantic, clumsy with haste.
The water makes everything difficult, the heavy denim of his jeans resisting, but the struggle only heightens the frenzy.
We fight against the clothes, the cramped space, and the lingering shadow of death.
When he finally frees himself, I don’t wait for him to guide me. I lift my hips, the water buoying me, making me weightless, and sink onto him.
The gasp that leaves his lips is lost in the storm raging outside.
I take him all at once. The stretch is immense, a fullness that borders on pain but bleeds immediately into exquisite, blinding pleasure. My anatomy, designed for the crushing depths of the ocean floor, shifts to accommodate him.
My internal muscles, stronger and more dexterous than any human woman’s, ripple and clench. They are designed to hold fast against the current, and now they hold him. I grip him with a possessive strength that makes his eyes roll back in his head.
“God,” he chokes out, his head falling back against the tiled wall, his neck arched. “Nerida…”
I begin to move. It isn’t the rhythmic, gentle motion of human lovers in a soft bed but the thrashing of the surf.
It is primal, wet, and desperate. I ride him with the ferocity of the storm that brought me here, my hands bracing against his chest, my nails digging in, leaving crescent moon marks on his skin.
The water churns around us, splashing over the sides, flooding the floor in rhythmic waves. The scent of the deep salt is overpowering, filling the small room, mixing with the musk of our bodies and the metallic tang of the storm.
Beneath me, his control fractures. The careful logic drains from his eyes, leaving only the dark, frantic stare of an animal.
“Look at me,” I command. My voice drops into the siren register, a dual-tone vibration that bypasses the ears and goes straight to the brainstem. It drips with compulsion.
He forces his eyes open. They are dark, and filled with a raw worship that feeds the monster inside me. He looks at me not with fear, but with a reverence that borders on madness.
“I see you,” he rasps, his hands gripping my hips, his body bucking up to meet my thrusts. “I see you.”
My lips pull back. I can’t help it. The pleasure is too intense, and it strips away the human mask I wear for him. My teeth descend, needle-sharp, translucent rows of serrated ivory designed to tear flesh from bone.
I lean down, the predator surfacing completely, and bury my face in the crook of his neck.
I hear the blood rushing through his carotid artery, a thundering drumbeat calling to me.
I don’t break the skin, not deeply, but I graze him.
I scrape my teeth against the sensitive cord of muscle there, a warning, a promise, a brand.
He shudders, a full-body convulsion. His grip on my hips tightens until his fingers dig into my flesh, anchoring me to him.
“Mine,” I growl against his throat, the vibration of the word humming through his skin, resonating in his bones. “You are mine, Jack Ford. You belong to the deep now.”
He arches into me, driving deeper, touching a place inside me that no current has ever reached.
“I am yours,” he confesses, the words tearing from him on a ragged exhale, a surrender. “I’m yours.”
The surrender in his voice breaks me.
I bear down on him, forcing him over the edge. His whole body locks up beneath me, and that sudden tension completely shatters my own control.
Pleasure crashes through me. My bioluminescence flares blindingly bright with a brilliant, white-hot violet that illuminates the heat radiating from our bodies. I throw my head back with a sharp cry, casting jagged, monstrous shadows against the walls as the storm rages outside.
Jack follows me a second later, shouting my name, his body convulsing as he pours himself into me.
We stay like that for a long time, tangled in the aftermath.
The water in the tub is cooling, turning tepid, the glowing indigo fading to a dull blue, but neither of us move.
I’m slumped forward against his chest, my face buried in the ruin of his shirt, listening to the slowing rhythm of his heart.
His arms are wrapped around me, holding me fast, as if he expects the tide to try to drag me away if he lets go.
Outside, the back half of the cyclone hammers the house. The walls shake. The rain lashes the windows like gravel, seeking entry. But in the small, flooded bathroom, with the scent of deep ocean salt heavy in the air, there is only the sound of our breathing, syncing slowly in the dark.
We are an island.
We are the eye of the storm.
And we are alive.