Chapter 26
Zoe
I sank slowly, looking up as Vodyan fought with the lamia. I worried about him, my heart beating somewhere in my throat when I saw tentacles, a snake tail, and clawed arms clash in a vicious fight, and at the same time, I had this deep conviction Vodyan would come out on top.
He was so strong, so utterly focused and dependable. He would win in no time and come back for me, and so, I didn’t even worry about myself.
Until a forearm snaked around my throat from behind, choking me. The lower half of my mask was ripped off my face, and my shocked scream turned into bubbles.
“Now, that’s better,” Carver’s cruel voice spoke in my ear as he tugged me through a hole in the cage surrounding the shipwreck.
I struggled, trying to grip the edge of the cage to resist him. Carver snarled and pressed harder at my throat, hitting my temple with something hard. My vision darkened for just a moment, my fingers slipping free. He huffed with satisfaction and dragged me into the shadow of the ship’s hull, my body buoyed by the water .
“Alone at last,” he said, turning me until my back was pressed against the ship, the air tank digging into my spine. “Move and I’ll cut your throat.”
I forced back the urge to swallow, feeling the edge of the blade pressing into my windpipe. Carver was right in my face, grinning so widely, he looked psychotic.
My heart beat faster and faster until I wanted to hurl. With my lower mask gone, I couldn’t speak. I could only shake, and hope, hope, hope.
Hope that Vodyan would come in time.
“I lost everything because of you,” Carver said, that grin still on his face even though his voice was furious. “And now you’re here, about to get what you deserve. Tell me, how does it feel?”
I tried to glare, but my face was numb from fear, my head dizzy from the hit he served me. Blood rushed in my ears, fizzing with adrenaline.
Carver laughed, rolling the blade across my throat. I whimpered against my clenched teeth, and he leaned closer.
“I wish we had more time together.”
He pressed in with the knife. I squeezed my eyes shut, begging the universe Vodyan would survive without me, when suddenly, the knife pulled back. My heart wrenched with hope.
I opened my eyes, but no one was here to save me.
“On second thought, I think I’ll enjoy watching you drown,” Carver said with a smirk. “It’s poetic. Don’t you think?”
I gaped at him, uncomprehending. How did he want me to drown when I had the ability to breathe underwater?
When he ripped the mask off my face and cut it off with a slash of his knife, bubbles from my tank flowing in a steady stream through the broken tube, I finally understood.
He doesn’t know. Of course.
Desperately, I reached for my mouth mask, knowing this would be my first step if I was really drowning. Carver laughed, whipping me around until my face flattened against the rusty hull of the ship. He tore the tank off my back, cutting where it was connected to the tubing inside my suit.
I held my breath, determined not to give away that I could breathe. Blindly, I scrambled toward the hole in the cage, but Carver grabbed me by the arm and threw me to the bottom. A cloud of silt rose, and I took a quick breath, struggling and writhing as best I could. I didn’t know how death from drowning actually looked, so I did my best to feel into the desperation of not having air.
“I will enjoy the next minute, Zoe. I will enjoy watching you breathe water into your lungs and drown, knowing you couldn’t save that fucking abomination or even yourself. And when I finish you off, I will rebuild, while you will stay here, not even getting to rot. That’s justice.”
With a wide sweep of my arm, I disturbed the sand again, giving myself cover to take another breath. I was on my hands and knees, doing my best to seem like I was growing weaker as I tried to stand up.
Carver laughed, kicking my legs from under me until I fell flat on my belly. That gave me enough cover to stick one hand under my stomach. I closed my fingers on the handle of the knife Vodyan gave me, just in case. While my other hand clawed at the bottom, my body heaving, I eased the knife from its sheath.
“Ah, that’s fucking beautiful,” Carver said with a laugh. “Zoe Gilbert dying at my feet like the stupid cunt she is.”
I moved more and more sluggishly, using the cover of the disturbed sand to gulp in a final, deep breath that I held. I stilled completely, bidding my body to be loose and hoping like hell Carver would leave me alone now.
“Well, that was anticlimactic,” he muttered. “Let’s make sure your fish guy can’t revive you once he finds you.”
I held back a flinch when he straddled my hips, my heart going into overdrive from terror. It was now or never.
I flipped fast, cutting blindly with the knife. Carver gasped in surprise, then grunted when my blade met flesh. I pushed in as deep as I could, breathing hard, but a moment later, a heavy fist connected with the side of my head. The knife slipped out of my grip.
“You fucking bitch!” Carver screamed, hitting my head again until I had to blink hard against a haze of disorientation. “The tooth wasn’t enough for you? You had to give me a scar, too? How the fuck are you alive?”
I saw a blur of movement over my face. I caught it instinctively, my hand closing around a blade. Carver roared, yanking it back, and I screamed, releasing a flurry of bubbles. My hand pulsed with a cold, vicious pain, cut open.
“Fine! I don’t care!” Carver snarled viciously. “I’ll gut you like a fucking…”
Suddenly, he was gone. One moment, he straddled my hips, looming above me in the gloom, and the next, he screamed, clouds of sand rising from the bottom where he tumbled away, wrapped up in a roiling mass of tentacles.
“You will never touch her again!” Vodyan bellowed, his voice sack lighting up so brightly, the entire shipwreck illuminated green. “You fucking scum!”
Carver gurgled. I sat up carefully, my head feeling tender and dazed. I didn’t see much, but it was obvious Vodyan was on top. Thank God.
“One last thing before you die,” my bodyguard spat viciously. “Who’s your mole?”
Carver gurgled something incomprehensible. A beat later, he screamed in such agony, I winced on his behalf, even though he deserved whatever Vodyan did to him. Dark blood rose around them and, a moment later, a cut-off palm drifted out of the carnage.
“I’ll cut you piece by piece unless you tell,” Vodyan promised, his voice so cold, I shivered. “Last chance. Who’s your mole?”
After a moment of silence, another gurgling scream shook the water. A foot floated gently up, followed by a dark ribbon of blood.
Before Vodyan had a chance to ask again, Carver broke.
“Beck! It’s Beck!” he sobbed. “Please, I beg you…”
Silence fell, and then, more thick, dark blood bloomed, completely obscuring them both. Two frantic heartbeats later, it parted like a dark curtain, revealing Vodyan who swam over in one powerful thrust, one of his tentacles sending the floating hand careening into the sunken ship.
“Are you hurt?” he asked, his voice tight with tension as his hands, the same ones that just cut Carver open, tenderly held my face. “Zoe. Talk to me.”
I pointed at my mouth, showing him I couldn’t speak. Gently, I cupped his cheek with my uninjured palm, trying to communicate I was all right.
“Do you have any wounds?” Vodyan asked, quickly adjusting his questioning strategy.
I raised my palm and showed him the knife wound. He took a careful look, his body tensing where it curled around me, tentacles holding me gently.
“Do you have other injuries?”
I shrugged, unsure how to communicate that I was hit repeatedly in the head. I pointed at my temple with my free hand, and Vodyan immediately palpated my skull, but the suit was in the way.
“I’ll take it off,” he murmured, sliding it off my head. “Are you cold?”
I shook my head. The suit still worked, heating most of my body, and I could live with my head being uncovered for now.
When gentle fingers buried in my hair, looking for injuries, I closed my eyes and finally relaxed. Carver was dead. He was dead. It was over. And even though I knew it beyond the shadow of a doubt, because I trusted Vodyan’s ability to kill, it still didn’t fully register.
There would be no trial. No more people trying to kill me or my family. No need to hide.
I was safe. I could go home. Maybe I could even have my old life back.
“Looks all right, but I want to get you checked out. Malgeri has a doctor on the boat, just in case,” Vodyan said, gently taking my chin between thumb and finger. “Do you have any other injuries?”
I shook my head, wincing when that made a wave of nausea roll through my gut.
“Come here. ”
His arms came around me, his tentacles holding me close, and I sank into the familiar, strong touch, tension seeping out of me in waves. Yes. This was safety, right here.
This was home.
I kept my face buried in the crook of his neck when he swam quickly toward the surface. My shivers subsided, and even though Carver’s maniacal grin still sat under my eyelids like a haunting vision, I knew I would be fine.
With therapy and time, this would become just a memory. It wouldn’t stop me from living a long, happy life.
When we broke the surface, Vodyan kept me warm while I coughed out water, heaving and snarling. This was definitely my least favorite part of being able to breathe underwater, but then, who was I to complain? I was alive thanks to Vodyan’s gift.
In a feat of acrobatic strength, Vodyan put me aboard a large boat and heaved himself in right behind me. A dark-haired man wearing a white shirt rushed over, guiding us to an area at the back of the boat, where he quickly checked me out and tended to my palm, asking me a series of questions. I was pronounced healthy, my head injury not dangerous.
“I’m so glad,” Vodyan said quietly, wrapping all around me as soon as the doctor released me.
It was cold, and I sank into his heat with gratitude.
Movement further down the deck caught my eye, and I sobbed with relief, seeing Azahl hauled in by a bigger, meaner version of him—an adult abomination man. Both stood on the deck, their black carapaces dripping, before the doctor approached them. The adult abomination waved him away, laughing throatily.
“God, he’s alive! But why won’t he let Azahl get seen?” I asked under my breath, outrage coiling in my gut. “Come on.”
“Azahl,” I said softly when we came over, the boy sitting on a bench, the adult’s arm around his shoulders. “Hello. Are you hurt anywhere? ”
A pair of black, impenetrable eyes focused on me as the boy slowly shook his head. I swallowed tears, feeling wrecked and inadequate. I wanted to apologize so badly, but I didn’t have the words.
Because how did one say sorry for something like that? He trusted me, he came to me for my help, and I failed to prevent his suffering.
When it felt like I couldn’t hold back sobs any longer, Azahl spoke, his voice quiet and inflectionless. Abominations didn’t express emotions the way humans did.
“I knew you’d get him, miss Zoe.”
I gaped, taken aback. Didn’t he hate me? I was convinced he would. Emotions roiled inside me, but it was unfair to burden a child with them, so I swallowed everything and forced a tremulous smile onto my face.
“I’m so happy you’re alive,” I said, and then winced at the way it came out. “I mean… Yeah. I’m glad you’re okay. Physically.”
“He is okay in every way,” the other abomination spoke up, his voice deep and gritty, something like amusement ringing in the back of his throat. “He was only kept in a cage and mocked for a while, and then almost drowned. It’s nothing.”
It took me a few seconds to comprehend what the man just said. A wave of anger pulsed in my gut, his mocking voice drilling into my head. How dared he reduce the child’s suffering that way? I shook with anger, but Azahl was there, looking at me, so I forced myself to speak calmly.
“What you described is a traumatic experience, mister…”
“Phantom,” he interrupted, raising his grinning skull to look at me. “And it would be traumatic—for a human. I already talked to him. He isn’t disturbed, and he wasn’t hurt in a lasting manner. He’ll be fine.”
My anger boiled hotter, until I felt I would spit fire if I could.
“How the fuck can you say…” I began, but the man raised his hands, each finger encased in matte, black chitin, and gave me an even wider grin, his skull’s expression shifting disturbingly .
I broke off, staring. I didn’t know how he did that. Azahl didn’t smile or move his face much, and he was the only abomination I knew until today. I got used to the fact he didn’t move his mouth to speak—I read abominations projected their voices onto the bone structures of their faces, whatever that meant—but the ability to shape hard bones into expressions was uncanny.
“Lady, I know who you are. The boy told me. You hug kids and sing them lullabies, and it’s all fine for you mammals, but he’s an abomination. We’re made tougher than you.”
I opened and closed my mouth a few times, refusing to believe that a child of six could be held captive and almost drowned and not experience any trauma.
“But he’s six years old!” I exclaimed, shaking so hard, Vodyan put more limbs around me until I was encased in him.
“He’s a big boy,” Phantom said dismissively. “When I was six, I lived on my own, running from abomination hunters in Mexico. It was rough until I got big enough to hunt them back. That fixed everything.”
“Sir, your horrible childhood doesn’t mean that every abomination child…” I started, but Azahl chose this moment to get up and come over.
The boat rocked, and he grabbed onto Vodyan’s tentacle for support. I extricated myself gently and crouched so we could be on the same level.
“Yes, Azahl?” I said, my voice instantly falling into the easy, soft cadence I saved for wounded children.
“Miss Zoe, I saw Carver. Mister Phantom showed me. He’s dead,” he said solemnly, his flat voice betraying no distress.
I shot Phantom a disbelieving look. What? He showed a torn apart body to a fucking child ? I desperately wanted to rip him a new one, no matter that he was literally armored. But that child was right here, staring at me, and I didn’t want to make things worse.
“Yes, he is,” I said. “He’ll never hurt you again.”
Something in the set of the boy's shoulders eased, his posture growing relaxed, as he nodded slowly .
“Yes. Because he’s dead,” he said. “It was fun, Miss Zoe. I’ve never been in a lake before. I liked the shipwreck. And the snake monsters were pretty.”
I blinked a few times, trying to take it in. Azahl turned away without waiting for my reply, going over to a demon and a shehru talking nearby. Phantom sighed, the sound rustling like a heap of insects crawling over one another.
“Lady, let me tell you something they don’t teach humans about abominations. Will you listen?” Then, before I could answer, he looked at Vodyan. “Will she listen?”
My anger rose hot again at being patronized, but I pressed my lips together and straightened.
“Yes,” I hissed.
He didn’t look quelled by my cool manner, his skeletal face grinning.
“Let’s put it this way. You mammals have an evolutionary drive to fuck, suck a tit, and stay warm. Abominations have two primary drives: to fuck and to kill those who wrong us. You with me? He knows the fucker is dead, he saw the body with his own eyes, which means everything is fixed. Whatever he went through doesn’t matter. His brain literally doesn’t care anymore. The fucker is dead. The problem is gone. Yeah?”
I stared at him. He was right—I’d never heard anything of the kind before, and it sounded ridiculous. But then, I wasn’t about to tell him his information was wrong, since he literally spoke about his own species. He was the expert here, no matter how much I disliked him.
“But he’s six,” I said again. “Even if what you say is true, doesn’t he need at least some support? Do abominations really not need to process? And would you say you wish the same experience on him as you had? Being hunted and having to deal with that by yourself? Or maybe we can agree he might thrive better with additional support?”
Phantom stared at me for a moment, his smile tightening until it looked like a grimace. I refused to break eye-contact, even though his skeletal face looked utterly creepy. After a long moment, he laughed grittily and raised his hands, as if giving up.
“Human females, man. They go straight for the balls. All right, lady, if you want to give him support, give him support, but educate yourself first. He needed to see that body. He needed closure. That’s the biggest support he can get, and without it, no psychological mumbo-jumbo will cure him, yeah?”
I nodded stiffly. Vodyan’s tentacles ran smoothly down my back, but he very wisely didn’t insert himself into the conversation.
This was between me and the Phantom guy.
“Fine. Thank you for telling me,” I said, though it barely came through my throat. “I have one more question. Is he… Will he be hostile? For example, if someone else hurt him?”
Phantom straightened, his skull pulling into an even scarier, more ominous expression. “Who? Give me their fucking name.”
“I…” I swallowed thickly, but there was nothing for it. “Me, I guess. I failed him. He came to me, he told me, and I tried, but Carver still managed to…”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” he stepped closer, looking down at me from his height advantage. “See? This is the result of your human overthinking. Is that what you wish on the boy? Lady, you’ve got issues.”
“Speak with respect,” Vodyan said, his voice calm, though there was a hard edge underneath.
Phantom shot him a quick look and focused on me again. His grin remained fixed, his face not moving as he spoke.
“Lady, you didn’t hurt him. In fact, it’s thanks to you two that Carver is dead and Azahl got closure. He doesn’t hate you or feel wronged in any way. Believe me, you’d know if he did. To even think that he might hold a grudge! For fuck’s sake, he just told you about the pretty snakes. That boy adores your too soft, human ass.”
“Tone it down,” Vodyan said, a growl stealing into his voice. “You’re speaking to my mate. ”
Phantom’s smile grew lecherous somehow. I had no idea how a skull could express things so clearly.
“They let you fuck your principals in Wisconsin?” he asked, voice laughing. “Damn, I’ll need to move here.”
“No, we don’t,” a red-skinned demon with a robust pair of horns said, coming over. “But we’d be happy to have you. You’re an incredible asset.”
Phantom laughed, the sound dark and rustling. “You say asset, I hear ass. No, I’ll stay in DC. Thanks for letting me jump in, though. The little brother needed that. I just bet the lady here wouldn’t have let him see Carver. Good job, by the way. He was all in parts. A 3D puzzle, eh?”
He laughed, that rustling echo loud in his voice, and turned away to find Azahl. And good for him. I had a strong urge to punch him in the face, which probably would have resulted in broken knuckles for me and merely amusement for him.
Malgeri, Vodyan’s demon boss, clasped Vodyan’s palm in a strong handshake. He was huge, towering two heads above me, his legs ending in thick, dark red hooves. He wore a charcoal gray three-piece suit.
“He’s a good guy, but people tend to hate him,” he said. “How are you holding up, Zoe? Vodyan take good care of you?”
I nodded, finally allowing myself to sink into Vodyan’s protective embrace.
“He was perfect.” A sudden thought filled me with worry when I realized how pointedly Malgeri said sex with a principal wasn’t allowed. “Hope he’s not in trouble. He really saved my life, you know. So many times.”
Malgeri’s smile grew, his canines unusually sharp among otherwise pretty normal, straight teeth.
“I’m sure he did. All right, lovebirds. Go home and decompress, and I’ll clean it all up in here. We’ll talk tomorrow, Vodyan. Also, you’re suspended for the next seven days for misconduct with a client. I suggest you use your time wisely.”
He gave us a wink and turned away .
“I’m so sorry,” I said, turning to Vodyan. “I had no idea you’d be suspended for…”
He pressed a warm finger to my lips, grinning sharply.
“I just got a week off, Zoe, with the official permission to fuck you senseless. Don’t be sorry. But… Will you come home with me?”