Chapter 26
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
RUE
Ihelped Jilyana strap the relic bundle to her chest for bed because the only way for her to shield them was to keep them in contact with her body. It was awkward, and I was so grateful to her for doing it. Sleeping with them strapped to her couldn’t be comfortable.
“Is that okay?” I tightened the scarf that bound them to her.
“Yes. That should hold.”
“But is it too tight? Should I loosen it?”
She turned to me with a smile. “I’m fine, Rue. Honestly. I’m just glad I can help.”
“I’m glad you’re here.”
Being on a boat fueled by testosterone would have been unbearable without Jilyana.
We’d spent a lot of time together the past two days.
Talking. About her life in the djinn world.
About my life at base. About Bastian and Bee and…
and about Shem. Yes, it was nice to have someone to talk to about him.
Someone who’d loved him. Someone who was heartbroken like me.
We’d bonded, and I’d trust this woman with my life.
“Shall I make us some herbal tea before bed?” Jilyana asked.
“I’ll do it. You cooked.”
I turned to the stove as an awful screech shattered the silence.
Jilyana grabbed my arm. “What is that?”
The screech came again, longer this time.
Gabriel emerged from the back room. “What is that?”
His expression was enraptured, his eyes glazed.
“I need it,” Asbeel said from behind him. “It’s so beautiful.”
“I think I know what this is,” Jilyana said. “We can’t let them onto the deck. Help me get them into the back room.”
We worked together to shove the males into the back room. They resisted a little but didn’t fight us. Jilyana locked the door.
“It won’t hold them for long,” she said. “The louder it gets, the more they’ll want to go to it.”
“What is it?”
“A siren song. Vicious creatures that live in the sea who lure sailors to their death. I learned of the myth a long time ago. I guess in Gehenna the myths are real.”
Another screech. Louder this time.
Thud. Thud.
Gabriel and Asbeel wanted out but… “Kabiel and the others!”
We rushed up the steps and onto the deck, which had been claimed by night. The screeching was so loud out here that it rattled my brain, making it hard to focus on my thoughts.
How the fuck was this a song? And where was the bow?
“The fog!” Jilyana said. “They’re in the fog.”
But if we were headed this way, then it meant the relic was also in the fog. The helm was unmanned.
My heart sank. “Kabiel! Kabiel!”
Matarel crawled out of the fog, moving slowly across the deck toward us. His eyes held wild fire. “Help. Me.”
Shit! We rushed forward and flanked him, guiding him to the door that led below deck. “Get him into the room with the others.”
Jilyana nodded, and I turned back to the fog. “Kabiel!” I hurried forward, pulse pounding in my throat. “Kabiel!”
He staggered out of the fog, dragging Kokabel across the ground by his leg, while Yomiel was slung over his shoulder.
“Help. Me,” he bit out.
I grabbed his arm, noting the tension in his muscles and the stilted movement of his legs, as if he was forcing them to move away from the fog with all his will.
“I. Can’t. It’s too strong,” he growled.
“You can. Kabiel, you can.” We were almost at the steps when he jerked away from us, swinging his body around toward the fog.
“No!” I grabbed him. “Kabiel, no. Listen to me. Listen to my voice.”
He came to a standstill, eyes squeezed shut, teeth clenched as he fought the siren song.
I grabbed his face and pressed my lips to his and opened the channel to the Morningstar power. I wasn’t sure if it would help, but I needed to do something.
He gasped, mouth parting against mine so our breath mingled for a moment. His skin softened to silky smooth beneath my fingertips, and the tension in his jaw melted.
“I’m here,” Kabiel said. “I’m here, Rue.”
I broke the connection and pulled. “It worked.”
“I can hear it, but it’s not as compelling any longer.” He looked at the fog. “The relic is in there, isn’t it?”
“Yes. We have no choice but to go through it. But I have a plan.”
The Morningstar power seemed to help calm the watchers, making it easier for them to resist the siren song that to Jilyana and me, sounded like nails on a chalkboard.
“We can’t stay here while you go out there alone,” Gabriel said after I relayed our plan.
“You’re a liability out there right now. All of you are. If Jilyana is right, then the creatures out there want you because you’re male. They don’t want me or Jilyana. We can steer the ship through the fog, and if those things attack, then we can use the Morningstar power to defend ourselves.”
Asbeel moved to the door as if in a daze, and Jilyana pulled him away from it. “Please,” she said. “Please stay hidden.”
“I don’t like this,” Gabriel said. “I don’t like you doing this alone.” But his tone said he knew that we had no other choice.
“We need that relic piece, and if it’s in the fog, we can find it. If not, then we can steer us through. We can do this.”
To make doubly sure they stayed put, we pulled the downy stuffing out of a pillow and used it to block their ears. Hopefully the injection of Morningstar power plus the ear plugs would be enough to keep them safe.
We locked them below deck and hurried back up into the night. A lock wouldn’t keep them penned in if they were determined to be free, but it made me feel better.
The boat continued to inch forward, despite the sails being down, and the fog had eaten away half of it.
Jilyana took my hand. “We can do this.”
“Yes. We can.”
The fog sucked us in, washing over us until it was all around us, until we were in the thick of it and the screeching was all I could hear.
“I wish they’d stop,” Jilyana said. “It’s so loud.”
It was loud, and it was getting on my nerves. If they thought they were getting their fins on my watchers, then they were mistaken.
“Hey! Stop it. Stop fucking screaming!”
Something hit the side of the ship to my left. Then something else thudded against the right.
A scrambling sound followed as the creatures climbed up onto our boat.
“Are you ready, Jilyana?”
She nodded. “I am.”
Several shadowy figures landed on the deck around us with wet sounds.
I caught the impression of yawning mouths and eerie green eyes before I opened the channel to the Morningstar power.
Jilyana pushed out her hand, sending a jet of dark energy toward the nearest creature.
It screamed as the power hit it, then exploded into white glowing cinders.
Another one rushed forward, and we blasted that too, then a third and a fourth.
A shrill scream tore through the night, the pitch like needles to my eardrums, almost making me lose my connection to the power.
The creatures stopped attacking us and backed away.
This wasn’t our doing. This was because of the scream. The command. Yep, something was coming. Something more powerful. Something that these fuckers obeyed.
The mist parted and thinned as a tall, painfully thin figure stepped out of it.
Flowing dark locks floated around its frame as if each tendril was alive.
This creature had a feminine energy with skin as white as bone and large dark eyes that reminded me of an abyss, desperate to swallow me and keep me.
Her mouth was a thin line that extended almost from ear to ear.
The top half of her body was stark white skin threaded with a network of black veins, and the bottom half was scaly, like the tail of a fish.
She glided toward us on tentacles that moved across the deck like slippery spider legs.
My stomach knotted with terror, but I held my ground. “Get off my ship. Now. You’re not welcome here.”
She hissed, showcasing so many teeth that my heart almost stopped. “These are my waters. And all that pass belong to me.” The words held a bubbling quality that made my stomach ache with fear.
I tamped down on the terror, injecting authority into my tone. “Not this ship. And not us. But, hey, if you want to die, then stick around. We can make that happen.”
Her gaze flicked to the dead bodies of her minions, then back to us. “We are many.”
“Yeah? Good, more for me to kill, then. Trust me, my power isn’t going to run out.”
Her eyes narrowed as she considered the odds, and there was intelligence in that look. This was more than a predator.
When she spoke, her tone slipped into a conversational one. “You speak our tongue. You wield strange power. You are not Gehennan.”
“No. We’re travelers from another world, and we’re here on an important mission, so you can either get out of our way, help us, or die. Your choice.”
“There has not been a ship in our waters for decades. Not since the lands were swallowed by the sea. Before that, the Gehennans would provide offerings to pass through our lands. Several offerings every month. The sweet flesh of the betrayer. We hunger now, and you have cargo filled with sweet flesh. Give us the males, and you may pass unchallenged and with our protection.”
“Protection from what? From being attacked by you? No thanks. And those males aren’t cargo. They’re my friends. You can’t have them. So for the last time, get out of our way, help us, or die. Pick one. Now.”
“Wait,” Jilyana said. “Listen, even if we gave you the males—”
I squeezed her hand sharply. “What are you doing?”
She shook her head. “Trust me.” Then to the tentacle woman, “Even if we gave you the males, what then? You’d be starving again soon enough. There won’t be any more ships. Any more offerings. Your world is broken. But we can fix it. That’s why we’re here.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Something is wrong with our world…”
She sensed it too.
“Yes,” Jilyana continued. “There are fractures in your world, and in ours. These fractures have disrupted the balance of your world. That’s why the seas swallowed the land which forced the Gehennans to leave.”
Jilyana had the tentacle woman’s attention.
She’d defused this situation, and hope bloomed in my chest. “If you want to fix things, if you want the ships back, then you need to help us. Help us to fix this, and everything can go back to how it was. You can have your regular offerings again. You won’t have to starve. ”
“You can make the ships return? You can fix this?” the woman asked.
I had no clue if fixing things would mean the Gehennans returned, but fuck it. “Yes. I can.”
The creatures began to mutter amongst themselves.
“Silence!” their leader snapped. “How will you fix it?”
She wasn’t stupid. She wanted details. I was happy to give them to her. “I can seal the fractures and allow your world, and mine, to heal. But I need something. Something that fell into your circle two decades ago. A fragment of an important relic. Have you seen it?”
The creatures started to murmur again, and this time the leader took a little longer to hush them. Finally, she raised her hand, and they quietened.
“Something glows on the shores of Perinady,” she said. “Perinady was once a city, and now all that remains is a strip of land leading to the gate.”
“The gate to the fourth circle?”
“Yes. But that strip of land is now home to the Ioness. They nest there now. I believe this light, this…relic is what has drawn them. They guard it. They…worship it. They will not let you claim it.”
“They won’t have a choice.”
Her eyes gleamed like wet stones. “In the beginning, I sent my people to investigate. We retrieved their dead bodies from the waters offshore. But maybe you will fare differently and this world will be healed. If not, then we will retrieve the bodies of your cargo and have our feast.”
A win-win situation for her, it seemed. “Can you lead us to Perinady?”
“It seems your ship is bound toward it anyway. But I will clear the mist so that you may see your path. We’ll be watching, and if you go off course, you will hear our cries.” She didn’t wait for my confirmation before turning away from us and walking into the mist.
The other creatures leapt into the water. After a few moments, the fog parted, clinging to the sides of the boat but leaving our path clear.
Jilyana sagged, hand on her chest. “We did it.”
“You did it, Jilyana. I was ready to battle, but you reasoned with her. Thank you.”
She dropped her gaze and shook her head. “I just…I want to help. I need to fix things. To atone.”
“And you will. We’re so close.” The relic called to me. “It’s so close now.”
Jilyana frowned and dragged me toward the bow. “Rue, is that…is that land?”
A strip of gray sat on the surface of the sea in the distance. “Yes…yes it is.”