14. CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 14
Noa
My heart nearly stopped with the shock of frigid water, needles piercing my skin, freezing the air in my lungs before the current dragged me under. But the sodden weight of my coat kept my arms cocooned and useless. I would drown. Sink to the bottom where I’d rot. Unless I bent my elbows, worked the zipper with numbed fingers. Dragged my arms free.
The burning in my lungs fueled an explosive need to breathe, to part my clenched lips and inhale.
I struggled, a child caught in the blankets, kicking out, tangling myself more in the river grasses, submerged branches.
Then a hand clawed at the coat, and I couldn’t stop the scream. Couldn’t halt the last bit of air that bubbled from my frozen lips to stream toward the water’s surface.
Had Ago found me?
I forced my eyes open, blinking against the watery sting. Not Ago. A woman gripped my coat, tugging me against the river’s current. Her fingers were long and pale, but her strength added to the terror. My lips parted. She slapped her free hand against my mouth, perhaps to hold in whatever air remained. Or keep me from drowning myself by screaming once again.
Her dark hair nearly concealed her features, but the fingers were nymph. She pulled us under the ice, thick near the riverbank. Faint light illuminated a hollowed space, an air pocket. I pressed my face upward, breathed in greedily. Coughing at the fishy water that leaked into my throat.
The nymph bobbed her head, mimicked drawing in air seconds before she pulled me under again. Towed me further upstream. I was nothing more than flotsam, wreckage at the mercy of the current that beat at my face, streamed through my hair. Wanting to push me back toward Ago.
When she paused again and I surfaced with the nymph beside me, my teeth were chattering, my legs kicking weakly to stay afloat—and I swore I heard Barend’s hybrids baying in the distance. Ago’s screams. Moonlight reflected off the snow; it was enough to reveal the silhouettes—long-legged wolves, half-starved, pacing along the riverbank, searching for the scent. Ago, stalking behind them.
It wasn’t in me to shudder. Each breath I dragged in sliced like knives in my throat.
“A little longer.” The nymph hissed to keep her voice low, and then we were beneath the surface of the Claw again, the current raging, my body crashing into the rocks. My lungs fought the crushing pressure. The lack of oxygen turned everything fuzzy.
When the nymph dragged me back to the surface, braced my body against a log, I had no strength to hang on. My arms refused to lift. My hands were leaden weights, completely numb.
My jaw ached from the chattering of my teeth.
The nymph said, “You’ll be warmer in the water.”
“Not under the water.” Ice cracked through every muscle. “Breathing for me isn’t an option.”
“Dying shouldn’t be, either.”
I glanced toward the riverbank at that comment, relieved to see it empty. “Did they give up? Or did we outswim them?”
“Didn’t notice you doing any swimming.”
“You swam,” I muttered, forcing the sarcasm past stiff lips. “I was towed like a damn piece of bait on a hook.”
The nymph whipped wet hair from her eyes and smiled, baring her pointy teeth. “And here I believed Lorielle when she said you were worth saving.”
Lorielle … the river nymph who had lured me into the water with a floating log, clawed her way across the rocks like a crab before morphing into a female.
“I was worth saving,” I groused. “To someone who thought I’d be lunch.”
“If it makes you feel better, I don’t eat things with legs.”
“Crabs have legs.”
“Crabs don’t live in fresh water.” She bobbed on the current, her dark hair floating, and for an instant, I was hallucinating. Her face morphed… and I was staring at Julien’s face, his laughing brown eyes. That funny, quirky half-smile.
Then she morphed back into her nymph self and asked, “Still want to argue?”
I blinked, but shook my head as the nymph hooked her fingers into my coat. “Trust me,” she said, turning upstream. “This will all make sense in a minute.”
More like twenty minutes of being dragged through an ice bath. I didn’t know how athletes did it, sat in tubs of ice, or the idiots who made the polar bear plunges. The nymph was oblivious to the discomfort, but she lived in the water. Her metabolism was definitely not human. Randomly, I’d hear a splash and catch flashes of an iridescent green tail breaking the surface, the powerful, scale-covered muscles flexing.
I’d always speculated—why would river nymphs be limited by legs, when tails were far more practical? If they changed shape, a shifter talent, then why not adapt to both land and water? Lorielle had shifted from a crab-like shape into a female with human arms and legs. And the night I chased after Julien until his phantom disappeared into the Claw, the splash reminded me of a fish jumping.
“Was that you? The night I was upset and racing along the old dock?”
“Anyone ever tell you patience is a virtue?”
“Then it was you.” I sensed the tremor running through me since my body had deadened into an inert state. She’d morphed into Julien that night. Only for an instant.
But I refused to wander down another rabbit hole. The pain in believing… no, I would not hope. Not again. I would not curl sleeplessly in bed at night, circling around and around about smoke that was black and not red. Refusing to listen to the voice in my head screaming, see it, see it, see it.
The worst torture in the world was clinging to hope when there was none.
“How do you know Julien?” I demanded, as dread weighed heavily in my heart.
The nymph’s answer was short and not sweet—she heaved me out of the water and onto a flat, rocky ledge; I flopped like a dying fish, my mouth open, gasping for air. My arms twisted beneath me, water streaming from the soggy coat, from my hair.
“Refusing to move is a bad idea,” the nymph said as her tail morphed into legs covered in jeans. Something wolves wished they could do, shift with clothes for the times when shifting was unexpected, although they’d probably never admit it. “You’re hypothermic. Better get the blood flowing.”
“Are all river nymphs as insane as you?” My fingers refused to flex, so expecting me to roll over and stand up to get the blood moving certainly counted in the insanity column.
“Freeze to the rocks, then,” she hissed. “The hybrids can scrape you off when they get here.”
The reminder that they were tracking me had my fingers fisting. The witch had warned me. If she was right. If the defaced runes enabled the vampires to track me like a wandering dog…
I eyed the snowflakes drifting from a silvered sky. The nymph was wringing out her wet hair. Behind her, the opening of a cave beckoned. I caught the faint warmth, wafting out like an embrace. Promising comfort.
My sigh was more like a grunt of frustration. The nymph smirked. I ignored her, every muscle in my body cramping. The effort to push upright had my lungs spasming. Each breath I snatched was as frigid as the water. But the rock ledge beneath my unbending fingers was wet and not icy; I blamed the odd geology around the cave. Perhaps a geothermal vent was inside, or a natural hot spring bubbling to the surface.
The nymph shot me a look that said, hurry the fuck up.
Gritting my teeth, I vowed not to show weakness to a nymph I still hadn’t decided was trustworthy.
My body jerked as if it wasn’t mine while the nymph moved with a graceful gliding, bending beneath a low, arched ceiling, then into a cave. Wedged into stone niches, the burning candles provided a soft light. Shadows crawled over the shiny black walls, damp with moisture—steam.
I didn’t know what was worse—the sting like pricking needles as my skin thawed, or the lumpy weight of the coat. Whatever material had insulated the coat, it was now soggy and balled against the bottom hem, with steady streams of water running down my legs and into my shoes.
“Ugh!” I tugged at the zipper, let the coat slap wetly against the cave floor. “What is this?”
“A little farther and you’ll see.”
We entered a widening space, well-lit with dozens of candles. Steam rose from a pool of water that shimmered with an aqua light. Bioluminescence, natural or magical, not that it mattered. Flat rocks surrounded the pool. More rocks functioned as chairs or tables with plates and glasses, although the dishes hadn’t been used. Piled along the walls were mounds of clothing belonging to men, women, children. Haphazard, and not anything the nymph wore.
“You’re a collector,” I said, breathing in the musty scent.
“I collected you, didn’t I?” She gestured. “Find something dry before you fall over.”
“Fine.” Gingerly, I lifted bits and pieces from the pile, holding them up, judging the cleanliness, the sizes. Pretending to be busy while I scanned the cave. Nothing… nothing… and then something.
Slowly, I turned, my heart pounding, the hated hope surging.
“My lady,” a male voice husked from a pile of bedding.