30. Rowan
Rowan
I’d always been a stubborn man, but there came a point even I had to admit when I was wrong.
As I watched Milo dashing through this fortified secret fucking poacher base, seeming to know exactly where to go and finding what we needed right when we needed it, it was time to admit that either he was the luckiest person to ever exist, or his goddess, and her guidance, were very real.
I had to trust her, as Milo did, to get us out of here.
Especially as I groaned and pulled myself to my feet again, seeing the gigantic beast in the generator room, about to break free.
I wouldn’t be a match for a regular polar bear, but this was a supercharged one, at least twice the size of any bear I’d ever seen.
It would take all of us to fight it, and even then I doubted it would be enough.
Et’el was firing a gun at it, her aim surprisingly accurate. I quickly realized what she was shooting wasn’t bullets, though, but some sort of tranquilizers. I just hoped they were strong and worked fast as I looked around, spotting another tranq gun on the ground beside a fallen poacher.
They’d managed to shoot a few of the selkie before they’d been taken down.
So not only did we need to retrieve the coats and get out of here before this entire base ended up underwater, but we needed to carry the sedated selkies with us back up to the boat I’d seen in the dock, and just pray to the goddess that it was intact and fueled up enough to get us the fuck away from this place.
The super-bear roared again, louder than any creature should ever be able to, and with a final charge, burst its way out of the generator room and onto the main floor. Shit.
I dived for the other tranq gun, turning it on the bear and fumbling for a precious few seconds before I could figure out how to get it to shoot. My aim wasn’t as good as Et’el’s, but I managed to hit it a couple of times.
Et’el shot it right in the face, the dart landing between its eyes. It looked furious as it turned to face her, and I knew without a doubt she was going to be its first target.
The bear charged, and I moved without thinking, putting myself between them like a damn fool.
This would be it. I doubted I could take more than a single hit from this creature. It raised its front paw, and dark, pointed claws seemed to gleam in the artificial light as it pulled back to swipe.
I closed my eyes on instinct, bracing for the impact.
There was another roar. A crash. And the dreaded hit never landed.
I dared to peek one eye open, and gasped as I saw another bear, just as big, on top of the first. They clawed and bit at each other, tuffs of white fur already escaping their battle, and we were standing much too close.
Taking the chance to get away, I turned, lifting Et’el’s petite form as she continued to shoot at the bears. I carried her what I judged to be a safe enough distance before I dropped her back onto her feet to continue shooting so I could find Milo.
He was by the cages, having freed the trapped selkies, and was now opening a door that seemed to hold several arctic foxes.
“Thank you.” One of the foxes spoke to him.
I’d just seen two men transform into bears, and earlier today had learned that orca mermaids existed.
There was one of them in the tank beside me right now.
The next tank over had two other mermaids with long pointed horns on the center of their head, and in the tank beside that there was some other creature with shining, dark green skin and eyes that seemed to glow.
The cage next to that had a woman with yellow eyes, huge eagle wings for arms, and bird feet.
So talking foxes? Actually not that surprising.
The foxes scurried off into the fray, launching themselves onto the bear poacher and pulling at its fur.
Milo opened the cage door for the bird woman next, and she let out a shriek as her wings flapped and she shot up into the air, moving up through the opening of each floor until she was out of sight.
“Give me a boost here, mate.” Milo beamed at me as he stood in front of the tank with the dark green creature inside it. It was pointing a sharp-looking finger up at what must have been the lock for its tank.
“What is that?” I asked as I went to him, clasping my hands together so he could step onto them and boost himself up high enough to get to the lock.
“A siren,” he said casually, and I almost dropped him.
Siren. Right. Of course it was.
“Are we sure we should—”
The key turned, and the lock clicked open, and it was too late to question anything as the creature shoved away the heavy metal sealing its tank closed.
It was easy to see this particular tank had much thicker glass and much heavier metal than the others.
I realized why the moment it opened its mouth and screamed.
My ears hurt, but the frequency of the noise it made seemed to extend far past what I was capable of hearing.
The foxes yelped, dropping from the bear and using their paws to cover their ears.
The screaming continued, until the walls seemed to vibrate and the water in the tanks around us rippled.
The Aarlinuk and the two horned mermaids covered their ears.
All the glass in the room shattered. I dropped Milo just enough to cling onto him as a wave of water swept my feet from under me. It thinned with the more distance it covered, until it was just one giant puddle filled with broken glass. But at least the screaming had stopped.
The siren rolled around on the ground, an extremely long tongue lolling out of its mouth as it splashed happily in the inch of water it remained in.
“Are you okay?” I asked Milo as I carefully got to my feet again, still refusing to let him go.
“Yeah,” he chuckled, placing a kiss on my cheek. “Now, let’s get these coats and get out of here.”
With the next rumble from the army of orca ramming the base, there was a loud crack, and a pipe in the distance burst. Yeah, it was definitely time to be leaving.
One of the selkies without a coat summoned us over to a closed door, and Milo went through his remaining keys until he found the one that opened it.
The room inside was clearly some kind of processing room, where they cleaned skins and stored their disgusting trophies. I wouldn’t have wanted to be in here a moment longer than we had to, even if the base hadn’t been about to implode around us.
The selkies seemed to know exactly where their coats were, rushing in ahead of us and clawing at the lid of a chest until it opened, and they went through coats that all looked nearly identical to me until they found the ones they were looking for.
Milo tried to wriggle out of my arms, but I held him closer. “There might be broken glass,” I told him.
He rolled his eyes at me. “Fine, then just grab all the other coats.”
The selkies scrambled off with their reclaimed coats, and I bent over until Milo could reach to collect all that remained.
He beamed at me. “We did it. Let’s go home.”