"I"m taking Malcolm as well," Julian cut in and Troy stiffened. Malcolm had been the one to injure Troy during Lucian"s attack on the house. He nearly killed him, and although he was under Lucian"s compulsion, it no doubt bothered Troy.
I thought about my own aches and pains and wished that I had a little more time to try to transition. It would be important once we arrived, and since I hadn"t been in the ocean for several days, I worried about how much the change might take out of me. But it was too late now.
With a nod in my direction, Troy left with Julian and Brendan following closely behind. They spoke quietly to each other, no doubt discussing strategy and war tactics. As much as I despised the two of them right now, I was somewhat glad that they would be there fighting on our side. The selkies can be ruthless, and with Julian"s guidance, Brendan and Malcolm had become impressive fighters.
I grabbed the bags from the table and headed toward the front door. A laugh from upstairs caught my attention, so I stopped to listen. The voices were mumbled, but I could tell that they were having a good time. I picked up Daniel, Carissa, and Marisol"s voice as they joked and teased with each other.
Do I say goodbye? What if this was the last time I would see them? Then I scolded myself. If I thought like that, than I would surely die. I had too many responsibilities here along with too many friends counting on me to lose this battle. Plus I had a clan to lead.
It still surprised me how much I thought about my leadership and how it had changed me. My people came first. They had to. So was I doing the right thing? In my eyes, Eviana came before them. Perhaps it was wrong, but she had always consumed most of my heart. We ruled together, therefore we needed to fight for each other. She would do it for me. I owed it to her.
Without saying a word to my friends, I walked outside and climbed into the SUV. Just a few moments later Julian, Brendan, Malcolm, Troy, and Palmer joined me. No one spoke. It was an uncomfortable silence that lasted the entire way to the airport and nearly the whole length of the flight. Troy and I discussed the attack plan a few times, but most of my thoughts were tied up thinking about her.
I wanted to tell her that I was coming and all she had to do was hang on a little longer. I wanted to tell her how much I missed her voice and her laugh and her face. I wanted to tell her how much I loved her.
Eleven.
Kain We waited until dusk before setting sail to the far outer reef that housed Lucian"s island. Abhainn had procured a modest motor boat and as we splashed through the surf, I wondered if it was even necessary.
"We need to save our strength," he said, reading my thoughts once again. "Lucian has at least a dozen selkies and even more ratchets patrolling the sea. This is not going to be an easy task."
"Brendan, Malcolm, and I can handle the selkies," Julian said.
"No, ye will need his help," Abhainn replied pointing to me. "Can ye control them long enough fer these dogs to finish the deed?"
I smiled when Brendan snorted. "Yes, I can. But it must be done quickly so that I can trap some of the ratchets too."
"Aye, although we are hoping that Isabel can persuade most of them to look the other way."
"She can do that?" Troy asked.
Abhainn"s face lit up with such admiration, I felt like we were intruding into a private moment. "She can do many things."
He drove us through a series of swells that drowned out any remaining conversation. I sat in the back of the boat, careful not to fall into the water. Abhainn steered the thing like a new driver which made me wonder if he"d ever been behind any type of wheel before. I saw his shoulders shake in laughter at my silent question.
Brendan sat on the bow of the boat, speaking to Julian. My blood still boiled from our earlier conversation making me regret bringing him along. It was my job to help Eviana, not his. What if she wanted him back after this? What if they tried to be together again? After my conversation with Carissa, I realized just how much I was willing to sacrifice for Eviana. Even someone as beautiful as Carissa paled in comparison to what I felt for the one who"d been promised to me for nearly a lifetime. I don"t know if I could deal with Brendan swooping in and stealing her from me again.
The boat engine suddenly cut off and we were thrust into an eerie silence. The slapping of the waves soon subsided and the stillness of the night felt like the calm before the proverbial storm. I lifted my head to the now darkened skies and marveled at the millions of stars glittering back down at us. They seemed so peaceful and content; a premise I hoped one day I would be able to know again.
No one spoke as Abhainn twirled his now human-sized hand in the water. He hung his head over the side of the boat like he was trying to see through the shadowy surface. His face was calm while he hummed a hypnotic tune. We all remained silent as we watched this strange behavior.
A splash in the distance made me jump and I noticed the rest of the group straighten up in alert. Only Abhainn seemed at ease. He continued humming another round of the chorus until a large canine-like creature darted out of the water by his hand. Abhainn whispered some words to the ratchet and patted its head slowly.
By sheer instinct, I jumped up in preparation for a fight. Julian snarled and Troy pulled a knife from somewhere on his body. The ratchet growled and Abhainn shot us a warning glare before whispering again to the sprite. Without taking its eyes off Troy, it shook its head until long, auburn tendrils of hair appeared around a beautiful, perfectly symmetrical human face. Two slender arms wrapped around Abhainn"s neck and with one quick movement, he lifted her into the boat. All of the men instantly dropped their gaze to avoid staring at the striking naked female who seemed more than comfortable in this form.
"h.e.l.lo Isabel," I said and extended my hand. She hesitated a moment before grasping my arm. She pulled me so close to her that I could smell the sea on her neck. Her face perused my cheek as she inhaled a long breath. It was a very intimate position and I had to force myself to remain calm.
"I remember you. You are zhat love sick merman, non?" she asked with a thick French accent just before pushing me away. Taking another deep breath, she quickly jerked her head toward the front of the boat and looked at Brendan. "Oui, and I remember zee smell of you, dog." Brendan looked at me in confusion.
"Isabel is the one who found your attackers," I explained.
"Oh," he said then also extended a hand to the naked ratchet. "Then I owe you my life. Thank you for helping me. For...for helping us all," he stuttered. Isabel"s beauty and danger were enough to make any man forget how to speak. I suspected it was one of the qualities Abhainn most admired.
"Aye, lad," he said and the two sprites smiled knowingly at each other. "My love, what have ye discovered?" Isabel glanced around the boat, clearly deciding whether or not to disclose all that she knew. "It"s all right. Ye can trust them. They are my friends."
She nodded and then sighed. "He had promised zhem a place by his side in zee war, but I persuaded zhem to reconsider. I zink zhat most will follow my orders. But zere may be a few zhat will need to be incapacitated."
"Are you certain of this?" Troy asked.
She turned so quickly that spittle flew from her mouth which had just transformed into one full of sharp teeth and a few large canines. "Oui! Zhey vill listen to moi! I am zee queen!"
"Queen?" I asked Abhainn and he nodded.
"Aye, Isabel is a leader herself. She comes from very powerful family, and most ratchets will listen to her." He smiled down at his love and squeezed her tight. "Ye "ave done very well."
She lifted her head up to kiss him and for the next few moments we had to sit there while Abhainn expressed how grateful he truly was.
Finally, Troy cleared his throat. "We should go."
Isabel growled again but Abhainn laughed. "Aye, lad. We shall." He pulled away from Isabel and looked at each of us. "Follow closely behind and once we get there, stick to the plan. In and out without Lucian noticing. That is what we want."
Isabel stood and stretched, much to the discomfort of the rest of us on the boat. It was hard enough not to notice her beauty, but her standing there in perfect form forced us to concentrate on the preparations. The selkies each pulled out their skins from the bags and wrapped their clothes in a watertight duffle. Malcolm changed first. The minute he wrapped his pelt around his back like a blanket, he dropped to the floor of the boat and shimmered just a brief second before fully becoming his seal. I remember Eviana telling me how graceful their transitions were, but to see one myself was truly magical. I envied their ability.
Julian tied the small bag of clothes around Malcolm"s neck and gestured for him to go into the water. Their transitioning power was maybe worth my jealousy, but the seals struggled to move well on land. Malcolm undulated and grunted until he finally had enough of his body weight over the edge of the boat to slide in the water the rest of the way.
Brendan was next, followed by Julian. Abhainn and Isabel grabbed hands as they dove over the side. I watched the five of them gather together several feet away from the boat. The seals twirled around and dipped their heads above and below the surface. Abhainn and Isabel stole another moment to kiss. Everyone seemed content. It was as though we weren"t heading out into trouble.
"You ready for this?" Palmer asked, shaking me from my thoughts. I nodded. "She"ll be fine." He slapped his hand on my shoulder, which sent several waves of pain through my body. I tried not to grimace. "We"ll get her."
"I know we will," I smiled back at him. Troy helped steady Palmer as he removed his shirt. It wasn"t until then that I realized how serious Palmer"s injuries must have been. He still didn"t have all of his strength back and I feared that the damage to his head may be more permanent than antic.i.p.ated. He probably shouldn"t be here, but I kept my opinion to myself.
Palmer and Troy jumped in the water together and remained underneath just long enough to make me worry. Transitioning when injured is not a pleasant experience. When they surfaced, I could see the pain in Palmer"s eyes yet he kicked his tail and stretched his muscles to settle into his new form. Troy gave me the signal that they were okay, so I pa.s.sed him the bag of weapons. He strapped it around his waist then pulled them both under the boat to join the other awaiting selkies and sprites.
Now it was my turn. Stripping off the last bit of clothes, I looked up into the sky. It was time to get my Eviana back. I sucked in a deep, shuddering breath and fell into the sea head first.
Letting gravity pull me under as deep as she dared, my other nature began to take over. At first it was spectacular. The feel of the salt water made my skin tingle and the m.u.f.fled sound of the moving currents set my mind at ease.
And then the pain hit me. My ribcage burned from the inside out as my lungs began to expand and push against the partially healed hole in my chest. A particularly gruesome spasm sent my back into an arch and I screamed at the searing pain. In all my life, I"ve never experienced a transition so hard. I could feel every bone reforming, every wound healing. It was as if this were my first time. I should have demanded they let me practice at Eviana"s before coming here. Now I would be weak from dealing with the change. I would be a liability for the team.
In the last few minutes, my vision cleared enough to see Troy and Palmer waiting and watching under the boat. It was slightly embarra.s.sing that they may have witnessed my struggle, but when another round of throbbing pain pulsated through my body, I didn"t care. Eventually, the soreness turned into a p.r.i.c.kly sensation and I watched as the last of my stab wound closed itself and disappeared forever. My scales suddenly reflected the limited light from the night sky and the breath I"d been holding no longer felt forced. The transition was over.
I turned toward Troy and gave him a thumbs up. His slight nod indicated what the tension in his body couldn"t hide. He had been worried for me. For us both. And now we"d proven that we could handle this.
I followed them to the others and surfaced just long enough to grab a lungful of air. We still had several miles to swim, but no one wasted any time. For ten minutes, we all swam at a fast pace in the darkness only breaking formation when we had to surface. Isabel changed into a form that reminded me of a dog mixed with an eel, and the ease at which she moved through the water caused a bit of jealously to stir inside of me. Not too long ago I was ready to attack her kind, and now I marveled at their uniqueness. We had always been taught that water sprites were extinct. And now here we were, working side by side to help each other. These past few months have really been eye opening for me in so many ways.
Abhainn stayed in his human-like shape but his legs had almost disappeared in a stream of bubbles. It was like he simply fused with the water and each molecule moved in sync wherever he pa.s.sed. He wasn"t using his arms or kicking his legs, he simply glided effortlessly and gracefully through the landscape.
Isabel suddenly stopped and we almost swam right past her. She effortlessly switched into her human form and put both arms up telling us to stay put. We gathered together behind Abhainn who watched her intensely. She swam ahead of us in a surprisingly human way, looking all around her as if she were waiting for something.
In an instant, I saw them. Their canine heads and eel bodies slowly surrounded Isabel. Abhainn jerked forward, but I grabbed his shoulder without thinking about it. Isabel didn"t want us to go with her for a reason, and when Abhainn nodded at my thoughts, I let go and retreated behind him again.
One of the ratchets shimmered and then turned into an odd shape, more akin to a troll than a human. His hair fell down a back that was full of lumps and muscles where they shouldn"t be. The p.r.o.nounced jaw and enlarged forehead only added to the image of a creature from another world.
He hovered in the water as Isabel swam closer to him and extended her arm. He grabbed a hold of it with both of his then kissed the top of her hand. She smiled and he gestured to those around him. Without opening their mouths or making a sound, they had a conversation. At last, the troll man pulled away from her and swam in the direction of our boat. There were at least a dozen ratchets following behind, but not a single one of them looked at us as they pa.s.sed.
Isabel came back to us and motioned toward the surface. Without hesitation, we kicked our way up to the top so we could speak to each other. Or at least the sprites and the mermen could, the selkies had limited communication skills in their seal form.
"Zhey say that she iz at zee boat house. She goes zhere every night to visit zee boy."
"What boy?" I asked, even though Isabel was clearly speaking to Abhainn.
"Graham Forrester," Abhainn replied. "Lucian has been torturing him in an attempt to persuade Eviana to join his cause."
Brendan snorted the same time I asked, "How do you know this?"
"Isabel and I collected information." And as though that were the end of the conversation, he quickly changed the subject. "Those ratchets will watch over the boat and surrounding waters, but it looked like only half of them listened to Isabel."
"Zhose ignorant feerie," she spat. "I vill personally see to it zhat zhey are punished for zhis."
"Ye have us all to help, my love," Abhainn tried to calm her. "I will enter the boat house first through the water, while the rest of ye watch my back. If ye can subdue enough of the selkies, we will need to get her out of the house and onto the sh.o.r.e as quickly as possible."
We all nodded in agreement and dove beneath the surface once again. In no time at all, we could see the faint outline of the rocky coral island. And just as quickly, the first attack occurred.
With a speed I didn"t know possible, two large selkies darted between us and cut off Julian, Malcolm, and Brendan from the rest of the group. I spun around just in time to see Julian go after the smaller one while Malcolm and Brendan fought against the larger seal. Their teeth were bared and even under the water I could hear the shrieks and cries each time a fang pierced through skin. Julian was handling himself, but the selkies were evenly matched.
Red water seeped from the chaos like a drifting fog. Troy and I started to go after them, but Abhainn held us back and shook his head. He pointed to the island and motioned for us to follow. We had agreed to let the selkies battle each other; our skills would be better served on other fronts.
And no sooner had that thought crossed my mind, did I see a wall of teeth moving in our direction. A wail from the selkie battle nearly made me lose my concentration, but then I saw Isabel rush toward the ratchets with nothing but fury in her eyes. She doubled in size by the time she reached the first sprite and ripped into its neck. The others, momentarily stunned by her brutality, watched in fear as she tore through three ratchets in a matter of seconds.
Then as if something jolted them back to life, they screamed and darted toward Isabel and the rest of us. Without a second thought, I threw up my hand and stopped the four that were coming at me with an invisible liquid barrier. I trapped them within my walls and watched with a smile on my face as they moved like they were stuck in mola.s.ses.
A trail of bubble wash sliced through my barrier in an instant, and when it came out the other side, all four ratchets were reduced to nothing but bite-sized pieces. Abhainn wiped his mouth and winked at me before swimming over to Isabel to help her finish off the rest of the sprites.
Troy yelled just in time for me to dodge out of the way of a selkie attack from below. Using my water control, I spun the selkie around faster and faster until he landed on Palmer"s knife. The blow didn"t kill him, but he sank to the bottom and slithered away into the dark. By this time, our selkies rejoined the group, bloodied and battered. Brendan had a huge chunk of skin missing around the side of his face and Malcolm was nursing a bad flipper.
Abhainn whistled and motioned for us to keep moving forward. There were no more attacking ratchets and selkies for a while, which seemed to worry us all. Where did they go? What were they planning? Surely we didn"t defeat every last one of them.
When we reached the crashing waves delineating the shallow surf of the island, Abhainn signaled for most of us to move onto the beach while he and Isabel made their way to the boat house. The six of us used the surf to glide onto the sandy area and quickly changed. Of course it was much easier for the selkies, but my transition didn"t hurt nearly as bad, and in no time at all I was walking on two legs again.
Troy took over command at this point and had the selkies patrol the beach while we made our way to the boat house on foot. I hoped this was the right decision, since the selkies were relatively incapable of dealing with water sprites. Hopefully Isabel had persuaded more of her kind than she knew.
I was thankful for the darker evening and lack of moonlight. Crouching down into a slow jog, we followed Troy along the path that Abhainn said led to the boat house. In the distance, I could see the lights from the main building and I wished that Eviana wasn"t in there. We only had one shot at this, and if we picked the wrong house, all would be lost.
Shaking my head to get rid of those negative thoughts, I focused on the path in front of us. Something shifted in the scrubby bush beside us and we all froze. The soft mumbling sounded like a person, and they seemed to be closest to me. I signaled to Troy that I was going to take a look, and with his nod, I stepped off the path to find the source of the noise.
It took just a few steps before I found the selkie curled up on his side and fully asleep. He was in human form, but the gun on the side of his hip indicated that he was most likely a guard. Why would one of the guards be sleeping on the job?
Palmer snapped his fingers and when I looked up, he pointed to another patch of bushes further up the path. I crept over next to Palmer to see yet another selkie, fully decked out in guard weapons, sound asleep and slightly covered by a loose piece of brush.
"What is going on?" Palmer whispered.
"I"m not sure, but it"s certainly not hurting our mission. Let"s keep going," I said.
Three more sleeping selkies later, we"d reached the boat house. Every one of the shifters appeared to be in a deep sleep and just before opening the door I realized what must have happened and smiled. Eviana.
"It"s her," I said in awe.
"What?" Troy whispered.
"It"s Eviana. She"s the one that put them to sleep with her compulsion. Instead of killing them, she made them sleepy. It"s brilliant."
"Go, Eviana," Palmer cheered. And then we heard the scream.
"Was that her?" Troy asked.
Before I had time to answer, my body jumped into motion and I threw my shoulder into the large door of the boat house. That was her scream, I would know it anywhere.
The room was dark inside except for a slight glow emerging from the water where Abhainn now hovered, looking rather satisfied with himself. He smiled and gestured in my direction.
I followed his gaze until I saw her. My heart stopped when her face lit up. No one could compare. I knew that now more than ever. Her eyes shimmered with unshed tears, and she pushed something off her lap so she could stand. I realized belatedly that it was another merman, but it didn"t really matter.
As she ran toward me with outstretched arms, I knew that I would never let her go again. This time she would stay with me forever.
Twelve.
Eviana "Kain," I breathed. I forced my arms around his chest and squeezed for fear that this was all a mirage. In the few days since my capture, I"d constantly wondered if he was alive. Not only had he survived, but he was here to rescue me. I sobbed uncontrollably as he rubbed his hands over my back.
"Shh, it"s okay, Eviana. I"m here now and I won"t let anything happen to you."
His voice, his smell, his touch. Why had I not realized how much all of them meant to me before now? Kain in my arms felt right. Felt safe. Without giving it a second thought, I reached up and grabbed his face. Pulling it toward mine, I kissed him. Hard. It was as if a gate had been opened and there was no controlling the flood of emotions gushing through my body. I"d missed him so much. I wanted him so much. He was mine.
Kain kissed me back with just us much pa.s.sion, surprising us both. His soft lips and gentle touch contradicted the urgency erupting inside. My heart pounded in my ears as the world faded around me. It was just the two of us in this moment.
When he pulled away, I felt a sudden pang of despair. It was like I couldn"t get enough of him. Was it because of the situation and my fear that I"d lost him? Or was it that I"d finally recognized what I wanted? I tightened my hold on him and nestled in against his chest. It wasn"t until then that I realized he was completely naked.
But he didn"t seem to mind as he continued to hold me close. "Are you hurt? I heard you scream," he finally asked, breathless from our kiss.