2. #2
Now Claire thought over that day again as she made her slow way to the marina, camera tucked into her backpack, next to the Poseidon’s keys.
She’d left the submarine docked ever since then, not even wanting to come see it, lurking in the water like an alligator waiting for a seabird.
Her bank account paid the marina rent, and while she was sure the thing got some odd looks, no one bothered it.
She’d briefly considered selling it, like Dierdre had said, but she didn’t want to answer the questions that would surely come with a sale.
So it sat here, an albatross around her neck that she mostly ignored.
Until now, at least.
Because something was happening.
It was time to fulfill her promise.
There was more than one way to keep an oath, even one made in a panic.
She’d told the god she would give anything if it let her live, but what the god had really wanted was feeling.
Emotion, a human experience. And the god was different now.
It wanted those things still, but in a new way.
One she had to be ready for. One she had to want.
One that came, she thought, with a purpose.
The marina was deserted. She approached the Poseidon, examining the surface until she found something that looked like a keyhole. She fit a silver key inside.
The glass window peeled soundlessly from the ceiling. The sub rose from the water, just a bit, so the floor was level with the dock.
It was, unfortunately, very cool.
Claire took a deep breath. She hadn’t had a panic attack since the day of the botched Ascension, but it was best to be prepared. The sea would protect her. The thing that had bent physics for the Ashburys’ gain wouldn’t let her be hurt again.
The sub bobbed as she stepped onto its tile floor. Some sensor picked up that she was safely inside, and the window slid shut behind her, the buoyancy that had brought it to the surface letting it back down again. Water lapped halfway up the glass, reminding her of the windows in Harrow Point.
She stared at the water a moment, arm itching. Then she pressed her hand against a control panel on the wall, blue light outlining her fingertips. The window opened again, just a bit, parting from a seam too fine to see with the naked eye. The glass stopped right before the waterline.
Claire dipped the fingers of her scarred hand into the cold sea.
Bioluminescence sparked, like an underwater fireworks show. Blue-green slivers of glow, gathering toward her palm and then arcing away, into the deep.
Claire pulled her hand inside and closed the hatch again.
Her key fit into a notch near the front of the sub. When she turned it, the sub sank fully into the ocean and started forward, arrowing through the water, deepening by degrees.
She could have waited on the bed, outfitted in new linens, not the ones she and Ash had smeared with their blood. But she didn’t sit, didn’t let herself relax. Claire stood in the middle of the deck, watching the ocean, and she waited.
He came with the smell of salt.
Claire didn’t turn to look at him, at first. She gave him a moment to gather himself, fit his pieces into a human shape. Her spine was steel, her breath held.
After a minute, she turned around.
Ash looked human. Mostly. Arms and legs as they should be, properly jointed with knee and elbow, no tentacles fanned behind. His skin was naked and damp, spots of iridescent scales shining pale. His eyes were still that glowing, lighthouse blue, matching her left one.
He swallowed. His jaw worked, like he was trying to remember how to make it form words, how lips and tongue and teeth were supposed to work together. When he finally did speak, it was short. “You called me?”
She nodded once. Held up her scarred fingers. “I made a promise.”
His lips twisted to the side. A trickle of water trailed from the corner of his mouth. Claire reached up and wiped it away. As she did, he took her hand, cradled it in his own. Gently, like he was afraid he might hurt her. Her scarred arm tingled pleasantly, like recognizing like.
“I felt you in there,” he whispered. His voice sounded different.
Deeper, the edges of words sanded off. His fingers ran lightly over her scars, the only vestige of what she’d done in the god’s throat.
Fed it a piece of her, but not all. Given part of herself, and taken part in return, let it make her mean and hungry, because sometimes you had to be.
“I could feel the bad emotions,” Ash continued, gaining confidence in speech. “Fear and guilt and grief. But the good ones, too. You were loud, even just the fragment of you.” He closed his eyes. “It was all I had to hold on to, sometimes.”
Claire curled her fingers, weaving them with his. Ravenous hunger twisted her stomach up and over itself.
“Some days are harder,” he said. “I think they’re days, at least. It’s difficult to remember how to measure time, down there.
But I’m me. Most of the time, I’m me.” His hand came up, tentative, cupped her cheek.
His palm had a strange suction to it. “You called me here. You didn’t have to.
Even with your promise.” Brows drew low over lighthouse eyes.
“What was your promise, Claire? Really?”
She pulled away from him, just slightly. This was still new, and she still didn’t know him, even with everything binding them together. “That I would be the end,” she whispered.
Here was the problem with promises, with gods. There were so many ways they could be interpreted. The god had thought that Claire would be the culmination of all it had wanted, all it had worked for.
She had a different interpretation.
“There’s some people we should visit,” Claire said. “I thought we could start with Rhodes-Hodge Infrastructure Solutions.” She smiled, and her teeth were sharp. “I’m so hungry, Ash. I’ve been hungry. And I’m tired of starving.”
Tired of lessening herself. Whatever she was now. Tired of making herself small and manageable, of keeping away from the sea, away from what she’d become and what that thing wanted.
She had no illusions that it would always want something good. And she was tired of worrying about that, too. There were only so many sister companies, so many monsters, and she was one of them now, in a way. Her hunger was endless.
But so was greed. She’d seen that. So maybe she could manage something like goodness, for a time.
Ash’s eyes glowed. He smiled back. His teeth were sharp, too.
The Poseidon arrowed silently into the sea.