Awaken (12 page)

“His eyes.”

He shook his head. “We don’t work in
bookstores. We don’t work at all, for that matter. Not on land.” He
hesitated. “And you should know that.”

I turned to go up the stairs again.

“You really don’t have any idea what I’m
talking about, do you?” he called.

“I know you’re crazy,” I snapped over my
shoulder.

“You’re telling me you don’t feel the pull of
the water? You don’t have to be near it? Anything?”

I stopped and looked back at him.

“We don’t do well far from the ocean,” he
said. “We get sick if we’re away for too long.” He paused. “That
doesn’t happen to you?”

I swallowed. “Just lately,” I whispered.

A heartbeat passed, and he stepped back from
the base of the stairway, clearing a path from me to the water’s
edge.

“I’m not a threat to you,” he said. “I swear.
I just want answers. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

I didn’t move.

“Can we start over?” he asked.

My shoulder lifted in a small shrug.

“Okay. Like I said, I’m Zeke. And you
are?”

“Chloe.”

His lip twitched, wry humor in his blue eyes.
“Nice to meet you, Chloe. You ever heard of dehaians?”

Not taking my eyes from him, I shook my
head.

“Alright. Can I show you then?”

He gestured to the ocean. Cautiously, I
descended the stairs. Keeping well clear of him, I walked to the
edge of the wet sand.

“It helps if you’re in the water,” he said, a
trace of amusement entering his voice.

I stayed where I was.

“Okay,” he amended, humor fading. “Just… have
a seat.”

Still watching him, I sank onto the sand.

He crouched several feet away, his
lean-muscled arms braced on his knees and his bare skin bright in
the moonlight. “Put your legs out so the water hits them. And don’t
fight it.”

My brow furrowed, but I stretched my legs
out.

He glanced to the ocean. A moment passed as
the tide swept out and then came rolling back in.

Water rushed up around my legs, cool and fast
and wonderful, and my skin tingled as it passed. My lips twitched
reflexively toward a smile, and I fought the expression, not
wanting to give any sign of how great it felt.

I looked back to him as the water pulled away
again.

His mouth tightened. “Okay, listen, how about
this? I’m not crazy, alright? Let’s agree on that first off. Oh,
and that I don’t want to hurt you. Because that’s true too. So now
if you’ll just tell me–”

The tide hit me and I gasped, unprepared for
it. Water swept up around my feet, my knees, my thighs and sent
shivers running through every inch of my body. I gulped down a
breath, my hands bracing me on the sand as the shock passed.

And he chuckled, as if he’d meant to distract
me all along.

I glared, but his amusement just grew. He
seemed incapable of keeping it away.

“Don’t freak,” he warned.

He pointed. My gaze followed.

I choked on the air.

Something was wrong with my legs. Really
wrong. For one thing, they were shimmering, and not in some fancy,
mineral lotion kind of way. Iridescent hints of blue and green,
yellow and orange shone from my thighs to my feet. And for another,
they were covered in a strange, barely perceptible texture.

Texture like scales.

Instinctively, my hands moved to swipe it
away and then I froze, fear catching up with me. I didn’t want to
touch it. I didn’t want to feel this on me.

I lifted my foot, and choked all over again.
Thread-like filaments no thicker than a hair ran from one leg to
the next, glistening in the same way as my skin, though they
snapped when I moved and faded into the moonlight like smoke.

The tide rolled toward me again. Pushing at
the sand, I scooted awkwardly back from it, watching the water like
it was acid till it finally rushed away.

Trembling, I looked at Zeke.

“What’d you do to me?” I whispered.

“Nothing. You’re dehaian. It’s fine.”

I stared at him.

He took a breath. “Sorry. Okay. I just…
You’re like me. You get under the water and you
don’t
fight
it, you start changing like this. I saw you begin doing it the
other day. And it’s fine. It’s not anything. It’s just who you
are.”

“Y-you saw…”

I couldn’t finish, but he just nodded. My
head shook in response.

“But I didn’t… I…”

“You were breathing underwater. For goodness
sake, you were screaming. That’s how I found you. Any dehaian would
have heard that for miles. And yeah, you were.”

I swallowed hard. “Wh-what was I…”

His brow furrowed, and then he seemed to get
the question, even if I couldn’t bring myself to say it.

“Just the other way we get around,” he
answered, his lip curving back into that annoying, amused smile.
“We… well, the way you are on land? That’s only one option.”

He grinned. “Mermaid, Chloe. That’s what
humans would call you. Or, you know, merman for me. But yeah, that.
We prefer our own terms, though.”

I blinked. I wanted to run back to the house.
Or wake up. Either would’ve been great.

But I couldn’t even breathe.

“You aren’t like them,” he said. “You’re one
of us. You come into the water with me now, I’ll prove it to
you.”

I shoved away from the sand, my body finally
answering the frantic signals from my brain. And then I fell back
again as my legs crumpled.

Zeke rose and I scrambled backward to stay
away from him. He froze.

“Don’t,” I warned. “Just… don’t.”

I looked down at my legs. The texture and the
shine were mostly gone, leaving only a faint shimmer like salt
drying on my skin.

Shivers ran through me.

“It’s hard to switch back if you’re not used
to it,” he explained. “Give it a minute.”

I eyed him warily.

He eased back into a crouch several feet
away. “It’s better if you let yourself change fully, though. Like
this… the energy kind of builds. Makes it harder to stay on
land.”

I shook my head quickly, hearing the
suggestion behind the words.

“Okay,” he allowed. “But can you tell me how
you’ve managed to keep out of the ocean this long? If you’ve never…
you know, done any of this before?”

I swallowed. “I live in Kansas.”

His brow furrowed. “That’s one of the middle
states, right?”

I stared at him.

“What?” he protested. “You know the provinces
of Teariad? Ryaira?”

I hesitated. “One of the middle ones,
yeah.”

He watched me for a moment. “Okay. And you’ve
lived there since…?”

“My whole life.”

His eyebrows rose and fell in amazement. “I
can’t even… there’s no way you should have been able to do
that.”

My shoulder twitched in a shrug. “I wanted to
come here. My parents just hate water. They wouldn’t let me.”

“Your parents,” he repeated. “They hate
water.”

I nodded.

“So they’re not… I mean… they can’t be…”

He looked like he couldn’t find the right
words.

“They got sick just being near the
ocean.”

“Really?” he said. A doubtful expression
crossed his face as his gaze dropped to the sand.

I looked down. My muscles didn’t feel as
shaky and carefully, I pushed to my feet. He glanced up, and then
stood as well.

“I’m going to guess your friends aren’t like
you, either, right?” he said.

My gaze twitched to the top of the bluffs.
“I’m human,” I told him. “We… we’re all human.”

His brow furrowed, but I just headed for the
stairs.

“Chloe,” he called.

I paused, not looking back.

“You’re not,” he said. “And it’s going to be
hard, trying to stay like this. Harder now than it was before.”

He hesitated. “But it doesn’t have to be. We
can help you. And if you’ve found a way to be on the land like you
have… maybe you could help us too.”

Trembling, I glanced back at him. “Stay away
from me, Zeke. Please.”

I took to the stairs, leaving him standing on
the moonlit beach.

The house was still around me as I came
inside, and when I reached the bedroom, I found Baylie still
asleep. Nothing had changed in all the time I’d been outside.

Except everything.

I changed into dry pajamas and then slid
beneath the blankets, fighting to hold back tears at the scratchy
feeling of sheets that had been soft on my skin only a short while
ago. A cool breeze twisted through the window, carrying the smell
of the ocean and the sound of the waves on the shore.

And I got up again and tugged the window
closed.

I returned to bed, pulling the blankets up to
my chin. Shivering from more than the night air, I squeezed my eyes
closed and prayed I’d wake tomorrow to find this had all been a
dream.

Chapter Ten

I watched her walk away and tried not to
swear.

That’d gone well.

I scowled. I’d never even
considered
she didn’t know what she was. I mean, how could anyone have missed
that their entire life? And yet, from everything I’d seen of her
reactions, it seemed like that was exactly what’d happened. She’d
never heard of dehaians. She had no idea how she’d stayed on land
this long.

She had no clue that she’d basically
electrocuted the ocean a few days ago.

And now she didn’t want me anywhere near
her.

Which was just great.

I turned back to the water, shaking my head
at myself. I was being fatalistic, and impatient too. If she’d
actually never heard of us, finding out like this would probably be
a shock. So maybe she just needed a bit to let it sink in. Maybe
she’d come around and we could talk about whatever it was she’d
done to the water, and about how she’d managed to remain on land
all these years in a place none of us could even reach.

And about how there was no way her parents
were dehaians.

Seawater swallowed me as I dove back into the
waves. I hadn’t known how to say it. How did you tell that to
someone, especially someone you’d met only a few minutes before?
Your parents can’t be your parents. Getting sick around water
wasn’t remotely something that happened to us.

Of course, neither was staying on land for
your whole life. Or living in Kansas.

An annoyed sound escape me. Endless layers of
questions, and I was no closer to finding an answer to any of them
than I’d been before. Instead, I’d just managed
yet again
to
frighten the pretty girl who electrocuted the ocean.

Chloe.

My lip twitched. That was a bright side. At
least now I knew her name.

I dove lower as the seafloor dropped, my
innate magic compensating for the increase in pressure. I’d give
her a day or so. See if she came around. It was all I could do
anyway.

A shadow shot through the water in front of
me.

I pulled up, my vision sharpening further and
my eyes tracking the path the dark shape had followed. My senses
stretched, trying to pick out any change in the water nearby.

I felt a ripple in the water below me. I
darted to the side.

It was too late.

Something slammed into my tail, and suddenly,
tentacle-ropes were crawling all over me, sprouting like weeds one
from the other and wrapping around my body at high speed. I
twisted, trying to break free, when another blast struck my side,
adding more sucker-laden tentacles to the mess.

Places on the seafloor flickered, the sense
of emptiness there suddenly giving away to dehaians who’d been
hiding behind camouflaging veils. The dehaians rushed upward and
surrounded me, while another came to a stop directly in front of
me.

He held a rock in his hand.

I thrashed at the restraints.

He swung.

Everything went black.

~~~~~

“…
promised
him that the boy would not
be harmed, understand?”

The words drifted through the throbbing blur
of the world.

“Yes, Wisdom.”

My brow furrowed and then I opened my
eyes.

I was upright. I was still underwater. And my
forearms were encased in thick shackles bound to chains driven deep
into the wall.

Gritting my teeth against the pounding of my
head, I looked up.

Two dozen dehaians were watching me, each of
them easily several years or more my age.

And they didn’t exactly look friendly.

A large cave surrounded them, three hundred
feet across with a ceiling at least a hundred feet high. The middle
of the floor vanished into a deep pit over which the dehaians
hovered, while farther behind them the cave became a tunnel leading
into darkness. Water-torches glowed atop metal poles driven into
the rock, their flames shimmering with blue and white light, while
on the far left side of the space, more torches flanked a stone
slab that almost looked like an altar.

My gaze caught on the restraints bolted to
the rock, and then rose to the mosaic on the wall behind it. In
intricate detail, gemstones picked out a twisted symbol, the shape
like a cage of barbed wire encircling an opalescent star.

Disbelief moved through me, followed swiftly
by fear.

It wasn’t possible. It shouldn’t have been
possible. They’d died. A century ago, their cult had been wiped out
in one of the only acts that had united every nation in the dehaian
world.

Because they’d been completely insane.

From the center of their group, one of the
dehaians came closer, and by the way the others pulled back to give
him room, it didn’t take a genius to figure out he was in charge.
His hair was silver and his scales were too. He looked old enough
to be my grandfather, and his dark eyes sent shivers down my
spine.

They seemed to cut right through me, and
leave cloying fingerprints over all they saw.