Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
Daruka
Asmoday slept with Selina. So what? Why did I even care?
I didn’t.
So why was I so damn bothered by that knowledge?
I didn’t actually want to know the answer to that question.
What I wanted was to get the hell out of this place.
No. I wasn’t ready to deal with dear old Dad. Nor was I willing to face Asmoday yet. And I knew he was coming after me, I could sense it.
I could also hear the soles of those fancy—and sexy, damn it—two-toned leather ankle boots he wore, slapping the pavement behind me.
I needed water. It had been far too long since I had a good soak, my earlier bath notwithstanding.
It was never not a good time for a swim when you were a stressed out mermaid.
Except I was in central Texas, and if there was water here, I hadn’t yet been made aware. My hopes were not up in that regard, unfortunately.
So, what’s a frustrated, confused half mermaid, half demon to do?
Well, might as well go check out the hellmouth. Might as well attempt to alleviate one worry. If it was closed, hey, good news, I could stick around for a while.
If it was closed, oh, crap, I could stick around for a while.
Damn it.
I darted down the alley next to the coffee shop. Gave serious consideration to setting the stupid place on fire, except then I wouldn’t have amazing coffee tomorrow. Fire and brimstone, why couldn’t anything be easy?
I hung a right behind a row of scrubby trees only as tall as I was.
I had the impression there had once been a building in front of them, which made me wonder if I was getting close to my goal.
Often, when demons had the opportunity to escape through an inadvertently opened hellmouth, they came out guns a-blazing.
It was a poor choice of entrances—the huge display made it easy to find them and wrangle them back to Hell.
And that was how I discovered the moat located just outside the city limits of Arrythmia, Texas.
It wasn’t a refreshingly salty sea, but it was water, and that was exactly what I needed to calm my annoyingly overwrought nerves.
I rushed to the edge, peered into the murky depths, and did a little happy dance.
In no time at all, I was naked—my body shifted into mermaid form whether I had clothes on or not, and I had to admit I liked the outfits Queenie set me up with, so I took precautions—and diving into the sweet, sweet wetness.
Already feeling better, I leaped into the air, twisting twice, straightening my arms as I prepared to break the surface. I opened my eyes and spotted Asmoday and Krishna a few feet from the bank, watching me. Well, Asmoday was watching; his hands were covering Krishna’s eyes.
Shit, shit, shit. In my mermaid form, my boobs were exposed for all the world to see, specifically Asmoday, whose lust I could feel even here in the moat.
I had no idea how deep this moat was, but I was about to find out. Surely, going all the way to the bottom would separate me from the embarrassment I now felt over being so exposed to him like that.
Damn, it was deeper than I expected. It felt like I’d been swimming for far too long given this was simply a moat around a presumably closed hellmouth.
Hmm. Maybe I should have checked that status before diving in.
I finally stopped swimming, pausing to tread water and catch my breath. Well, not really my breath, since I was currently dragging oxygen into my body through my gills. As murky as it was near the surface, I couldn’t even see the end of my fin here.
Maybe I didn’t need to be quite this deep. It was entirely possible there were creatures down here I didn’t want to come face-to-face with. Something this close to a hellmouth—if there weren’t Daddy’s minions hiding down here, the townsfolk might have taken precautions—
Something wrapped around my fin. I reached down and grabbed it, pulling it up to eye level so I could see it in the dimness.
A tentacle. With a claw on the end.
I threw it away from me and began swimming as fast as I could toward the surface. No wonder this moat was so deep. It had to be to house a kraken.
A kraken! That would definitely keep people away from the hellmouth. And, frankly, keep any demons trying to escape from doing so.
Also, that seemed like something Queenie would have warned a girl about. Especially one who was half mermaid. You’d think she’d realize I needed to take a swim on occasion.
But not with a kraken!
I felt the tentacles behind me, waving through the water, reaching for me, but I was managing to keep just out of reach.
Finally, light began filtering into the water, and kraken hated sunlight.
Just a little bit farther and I’d be safe.
I’d have to flop onto shore and wait for my scales to dry before I could shift back into human form, which sucked.
I was about to give Asmoday an eyeful of big girl knockers, but that was the lesser of two evils at the moment.
I broke the surface, barely noted that Krishna appeared to be struggling to get away from Asmoday, before I started swimming toward shore. I’d hardly managed two strokes before something wrapped around my fin again and jerked me under.
This time, the thing’s hold was a lot more secure, and it clung to me as it sank toward the bottom, towing me along with it.
Doubling over, my poor, underutilized abs screaming at me, I grabbed the tentacle and tried to loosen it while mentally sifting through all the curses I knew, trying to determine what would be most effective against a gigantic octopus with four rows of needle-like teeth in its bulbous head and twenty tentacles that had razor sharp claws.
Something shot past me. A dog?
No, a wolf. It opened its jaws and clamped down on the tentacle wrapped around my fin. The tentacle immediately loosened, and I shimmied free while it flung the wolf through the water.
Ah, hell. Ten bucks said that was Krishna.
This struck me as exactly something that kid would do.
He’d pegged me for a bleeding heart after I’d snapped at Selina on his behalf, and he’d decided we were going to be friends forever.
That wasn’t true, of course, since I didn’t plan to keep in touch with anyone after I left this place, but I had to admit, it was nice to actually have a friend.
And said friend couldn’t breathe underwater. I needed to go after him and get him to the surface while fending off a killer octopus.
No sweat.
Fluttering my tail, I charged through the water, catching up to Krishna, who was trying really damn hard not to pull in a lungful of water. Grabbing him around the stomach, I swam my heart out toward the surface.
Only to be snagged by that damn kraken again.
I gave the wolf a shove that would hopefully get his head above water, and my brain finally kicked into gear. I pulled on my magic, sending a lightning bolt at the offending tentacle.
It immediately jerked away and I hightailed it toward the surface, only to be waylaid yet again before I could get there.
This time, though, it was an arm, wrapping around my midsection, dragging me toward the mossy water’s edge. My head pushed through the waves, and I glanced over at Asmoday, who was swimming one-handed toward shore. A soaking wet, bedraggled wolf was already sitting in the grass, waiting for us.
Asmoday’s finger brushed the underside of my boob, and I shoved his arm away. “I got it from here,” I said icily.
“I was just trying to help,” he said, totally fake-innocent.
“Uh-huh.”
He climbed out and leaned back on his elbows, breathing heavily, all damp and sexy with his leather vest clinging to his torso and water streaming down his face and neck.
“Come on out,” he said.
“No way,” I replied. No way was I giving him an eyeful of my wet boobs with nipples that were currently standing at attention, admiring how good he looked soaking wet.
A fluffy, rainbow-colored towel landed in his lap. I glanced up at the shore, where a tatted up phoenix stood behind Krishna, mouth pinched, dark eyes practically screaming disapproval.
“You do realize that none of you can regenerate, right?” he said in a strangled voice.
I darted a glance in Asmoday’s direction. He shrugged and handed me the towel. “River has issues. Doesn’t like people putting themselves in danger unnecessarily.”
Honestly? I could appreciate that take.
I basically rolled out of the water and into the cocoon of the towel, doing my damndest to keep all the important bits hidden from prying eyes.
“Are you okay?” Asmoday asked, sounding genuinely concerned.
“I’m fine.” I tucked the end of the towel into my cleavage and lay there on the grass, waiting for my fin to dry so it would revert to my human form.
“Did it help?”
“Getting attacked by a kraken?”
He chuckled. “Taking a swim. Until you were attacked. Did you feel better, at least for a minute?”
I shifted my gaze to the side. How did he know?
“I get it,” he said. “I’m the same way.” He nodded at what looked like a small park that I’d missed behind the row of scrubby trees.
With its green grass and bright, colorful flowers, wood and wrought iron park benches surrounding a gently burbling fountain, the space was a sweet and cozy oasis among all these bleached buildings and the brown landscape outside of town.
“I like to hang out over there sometimes. To de-stress.”
“I gotta get back,” the phoenix called out. “I have an appointment coming in. Your little friend here is shaking like a leaf, and I only brought one towel.”
With that, the phoenix turned away from us and meandered back to Main Street.
Asmoday stood and scooped the shivering wolf into his arms. “I need to get him back to his place so he can dry off and shift in private and put some clothes on.”
I noted the pile of shredded material on the damp ground, which I presumed had once been Krishna’s clothing.
“Right.” I didn’t want to appreciate his consideration for others, and yet, of course, I did.
“You aren’t going to…?”
He glanced at the flat, unassuming circle of land in the middle of the moat. I sensed a whole lot of magic here, but nothing overtly nefarious. Nothing that screamed Daddy Dearest.
And I’d had my fill of run-ins with kraken.
“No,” I finally confirmed.
“Good.” With a nod, he strode away, Krishna in his arms.
I lay there, letting the sun do its thing, repeating that brief conversation in my head.
And I hated myself for liking the fact that we had something in common.