Authors: Tracy Deebs
Which didn’t make sense when I thought about the plan he had outlined the day before. He’d been a big believer of blasting our way through, as Dimitri had wanted to do, so this sudden stealth didn’t make sense.
“Why didn’t he wake me? He knows I never would have let him go off alone. I could have helped him.”
“He was in a hurry.” Again Mahina avoided looking at my face. “Besides, I think he was still mad from the fight.”
“Mad or not, that doesn’t mean he goes off half-cocked like this. Especially when it could be a trap. He doesn’t know what’s going on out there right now.”
Mahina nodded.
“Okay, what aren’t you telling me!” I exploded.
“Nothing, why?”
“Because you haven’t looked at me once. Something is obviously going on. You need to tell me what it is.”
“Tempest …” She sighed. “Mark went with him.”
I swear my heart skipped a beat, two, as my stomach turned to ice. “Mark?” It was a hoarse whisper.
Mahina nodded miserably.
“Why the hell would Kona take Mark? The last time they were together they were trying to kill each other!”
“The messenger had more news.”
“Oh, yeah? What is it?”
“There’s a bounty on your head. A big bounty. So big that neither Kona nor Mark thinks there’s any way to protect you out there. They tried to keep it pretty much under wraps between the messenger and everyone on the island, but it’s already all over the oceans. Every sea creature in the world will be gunning for you.”
“Which is what Tiamat was counting on.”
“Exactly.”
“So, tell me again why they decided Mark was the right choice to go with Kona?”
She gave me a patently disbelieving look. “You don’t honestly think Mark would let himself be left behind when your safety was an issue, did you?”
I thought of him through the years. Such a bad-ass. So determined to protect me no matter what the threat. “No. He’d never be okay staying behind if he thought there was a threat against me that he could stop. But what was Kona thinking? You can’t tell me he really thought it was a good idea to bring Mark along. How was he supposed to get back to Kona’s lands, anyway?”
“They took the yacht. Mark has scuba gear to use when it’s time, just like before.”
“What aren’t you telling me?” When she didn’t respond, I fought the urge to shake her. “Come on, Mahina! Spill!”
“I think it’s a trap.”
“You already said that.”
“No. I mean, all the way around. Remember how Mark said your dad’s girlfriend was the one who had helped him find you?”
“How could I forget? I didn’t know whether to thank her or punch her.”
“Well, she gave him something that’s supposed to help him breathe underwater. It doesn’t last forever, but it will last a few hours. Or at least that’s what she told him.”
“That’s ridiculous. Nothing like that exists.”
“Strictly speaking, that’s not exactly true,” Mahina said, looking like she wanted to be anywhere but here explaining this to me.
Which I could understand, as I felt like the top of my head was about to blow off. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“Rumor has it the sea witch can cook up potions like that. She usually uses them to entice humans into her traps.”
“Tiamat? You’re telling me the potion Mark has came from Tiamat?” I was shouting now, but I couldn’t help it. My dad’s new girlfriend was working for the sea bitch herself? Just the thought of her being close enough to Dad, Moku, and Rio to hurt them made me insane. “Did you tell him not to take it? It could be poisoned. It’s not as if Tiamat likes me so much that she’s dying to help me out.”
“Of course I tried to tell him that.”
“What did he say?”
“All he could think about was you, Tempest. I couldn’t get through to him. The most he would give was a promise that he wouldn’t use it unless it was absolutely necessary.”
“Where was Kona through all this?” I all but screeched. “I don’t believe for one second that he was willing to allow anything from Tiamat aboard that yacht with him.”
Mahina looked out over the water. “I don’t know that I’m right …”
The dread coalesced into something else. Something … worse. “About what?”
“I was just thinking. What happens to Kona if Mark’s out of the way?”
“What do you mean?”
It was her turn to be exasperated with me. “What do you think I mean? You saw Kona this morning.”
“That was just a fight.”
“I know. But did you see the look on his face during the fight? He would have killed Mark if he could have.”
“What are you saying?”
“You know what I’m saying. You just don’t want to admit it.”
“He
wouldn’t
.”
“You keep forgetting. Kona’s not human, Tempest. He may look like one, but his thinking—especially when threatened—is much more animalistic. And considering the fact that you have chosen Mark over him again and again, it’s not that big a jump to think he took Mark with him—”
“To kill him? Just because I love him? You really think Kona has that inside him?”
“Oh, he won’t kill him. He’ll just make sure the Leviathan or Tiamat or Sabyn does.”
The last cobwebs in my brain finally cleared, and I took off running then, faster than before. Because while I didn’t want to even imagine Kona doing something like that, what Mahina had said made sense. And that scared the hell out of me. I could fight Tiamat, fight Sabyn, even take on the Leviathan if I had to. But Kona? How was I supposed to fight him too?
I was pretty much panic-stricken by the time we got to the water. I was ready to just dive in, but Mahina—as always—was the brains of our operation. She secured four guards for us, along with food, weapons, and underwater backpacks. Kona and Mark were traveling on the yacht, so if we hurried—and the stars aligned—we could swim to Kona’s territory faster than he and Mark and the others could get there.
“Why didn’t you wake me?” I demanded as we filled the backpacks as fast as we could. “I could have stopped this before it ever got to this point—”
“Believe me, I tried. You wouldn’t wake up. I even brought Zarek to check on you. He told me to let you sleep it off.”
“Sleep what off? That doesn’t even make sense! I’m a light sleeper—” I broke off, remembering how groggy and out of it I’d felt earlier when I had finally struggled toward consciousness. Like I was slogging through mud … or sedatives. “He drugged me. After everything I told him, everything I went through with Sabyn, Kona drugged me?
Again!
”
“It could have been Mark.”
“Where would he have gotten the stuff? It’s not like he has a healer following him around at his beck and call.”
“That’s true.” Mahina looked like she was going to be sick. “Maybe they both did it. You and Mark went back to your cave; then they left the next day and I never saw you. When I went to check on you, I found you drugged.”
“Mark, too?” I asked, horrified.
“It seems like the most logical idea.”
“But why?”
“I assume to keep you safe.”
Ugh. I was so sick of that kind of crap.
“How long have I been out?”
“A day and a half.”
I stared at her in shock. “A day—” I screamed, a long, primal sound that was ripped from the very heart of me. “I swear to God, I’m going to kill Kona when I get my hands on him. I can’t believe he did this. I just can’t believe it.” I finished shoving the last of the supplies in my backpack, then slung it over my shoulder. “Come on. We’re wasting time.”
Mahina was right behind me as I hiked back down to the water. Both of us were on our second energy bar, and I was feeling a little nauseous—though I didn’t know if it was from the sedative or all the calories I was shoveling in.
And then it was go time. Once in the water, I shucked off my bikini bottoms and dove deep. Seconds later, I shifted, my legs changing into my long, purple tail in a haze of sparks and agony-tipped pleasure. I glanced over, saw Mahina’s turquoise tail out of the corner of my eye. Satisfied that things were as they should be, I started to swim.
Though I complain an awful lot about the dark side of being
mermaid, I have to admit the tail thing is amazingly cool. While I usually use my legs—even when I’m under the ocean for weeks on end—because I’m more comfortable with them, there’s nothing quite like swimming with a tail. When we’re deep under open water, we can really book it.
Today I swam faster than I ever had before, filled with a grim determination to see this through. We swam through coral reefs, over jellyfish forests, around schools of fish and even the occasional dolphin pod. Usually, I would stop and play—I love dolphins—but not today. Mahina and I were on a mission.
The last time I’d swum with this kind of single-minded determination had also been with Mahina. We’d been rushing to rescue Kona then, not knowing that Tiamat had also captured Mark. That time Kona had begged me to stay away, more than willing to sacrifice himself to save me. Today he was willing to sacrifice Mark instead, though I wasn’t sure what he thought it would get him. Did he think I wouldn’t know? That I wouldn’t figure out what he had planned? Or did he think that once Mark was out of the way, I would just forgive him? Take him back?
I shuddered at the thought. I had loved Kona when I first became mermaid, and I still did. But I wasn’t in love with him anymore. To be honest, I wasn’t sure if I ever had been. I think I’d been more in love with the idea of loving the guy who had helped me become a mermaid. I hadn’t been leading him on—I had
wanted
to love him, believed I did—but it wasn’t that easy. Not when Mark was still in my heart.
Hey, you okay?
Mahina asked sharply.
Yeah. Why?
You’re slowing down
.
Crap
. I sped up again, blocking thoughts of Mark and Kona from my mind as I did. I couldn’t afford to be distracted, not now. Not when doing so could mean the difference between getting there in time to save Kona and Mark and not. Because while Kona might think he had this all planned out, I knew differently. I’d fought Tiamat, fought Sabyn—more than he had, in fact. I knew how easily a fight with them could change, how you could have all the advantages and then suddenly lose everything.
Kona was going into this at a severe disadvantage already. Though he knew his land better than anyone else, that advantage wasn’t enough to make up for the Leviathan’s power, his stranglehold on Kona’s clan, the time he’d had to shore up his defenses and his friends, all of whom were as evil and terrible as the Leviathan himself. And in Tiamat’s case, even worse.
Mahina dropped back suddenly, and I looked up just in time to stop myself from running into one of the largest great white sharks I had ever seen. I screamed a little in my head and Mahina laughed, like she always did. But for me, it didn’t matter how many times Kona or Mahina told me that sharks wouldn’t hurt me; they were still my greatest phobia—in or out of the water. Usually I was pretty careful, staying away from places that sharks frequented on a regular basis, but when you were swimming huge sections of the ocean at a time, a run-in was inevitable.
We let the shark pass, the guards circling us protectively, and though he stared at me with his cold, flat black eyes—for what
felt like way too long—in the end he continued on his way without so much as making a move in our direction. Thank God. I don’t think I could have handled a shark attack on top of everything else that was going on right now.
When are you going to get over your silly little fear?
Mahina asked when we were once more underway.
When sharks stop ripping things to pieces
.
That’s never going to happen
.
Precisely my point
.
She rolled her eyes at me, but I just ignored her. I didn’t mess with her when she freaked out over octopi. She claimed that she didn’t like the way they looked at her, but really? I’d take an octopus any day of the week over a shark. Unless, of course, it was that horrifically awful thing that attacked my dad.
So it was interesting that, when the attack came, it came not from a shark
or
an octopus but from the pretty jellyfish that I had always regarded as fairly harmless. Oh, I knew they could sting—you don’t spend your life surfing in tropical climates without suffering a jellyfish sting now and again. But at the same time, I’d never thought of them as particularly fatal until—nearly hallucinatory with exhaustion—we swam straight into a forest of them.
Mahina got stung first. Her cry of pain roused me from my near stupor and I started toward her. I never got there—instead, I ran straight into three jellyfish and got stung on my face, my hand, and my shoulder.
I recoiled in pain and ended up bumping into more jellyfish that had filled in the path behind me. I added more stings, four
or five this time, and could feel the venom working its way through my body. My tongue was swelling, my arms and legs were on fire, and I was growing more and more lethargic.
Mahina! Where are you?
I’m over here
. She didn’t sound good.
Are you okay?
I can’t—I can’t breathe, Tempest
.
Panic ripped through me.
Okay, I’m coming for you. Keep talking to me, Mahina
.
I’m … trying … I’m … allergic—
Oh, shit. Closing my eyes against the pain, I barreled through the jellyfish between where her voice was coming from and me. I was so focused on getting to her that I barely felt the stings as they happened. At the same time, though, I could feel how the poison was affecting my reflexes—I was slower, more confused, had a hard time keeping my focus.
Mahina
, I reminded myself as my mind started to wander.
Get to Mahina
.
I finally found her. She was drifting through the jellyfish forest, her body horizontal as she moved with the current. I freaked out when I saw her—floating the way she was made her an even bigger target for the jellyfish than if she’d been swimming.