Fire (The Mermaid Legacy - Book 2) (3 page)

Instantly a fierce hatred almost overwhelmed me. It would be easy to take the two of them out, an energy ball for each would wipe the mocking smirks off their faces.

The Miengu’s movements were blindingly fast and he had the smaller Oceanid in a vice-like unnatural grip in the time it took to blink my eyes.

“Perhaps you don’t understand the importance of finding this little girl…alive?” The words were hissed through clenched teeth. “Because that is what she is, a stupid little girl who has had only three days to learn to swim underwater and yet you…” He tightened his grip on the smaller Oceanid, forcing a stream of bubbles and a wheeze of pain out of him, “can’t seem to find her!”

“She could still be here,” the smaller Oceanid wheezed. “And she’s alone now so she’ll be much easier to find.”

The larger considered this for a few more moments, the thick bands of muscle on his arms continuing to squeeze the smaller Oceanid before releasing him as his skin took on the same ghostly pale blue tinge that now covered Qinn.

“What do you mean?”

“She could be at the surface or something…every time her scent disappears it’s as if she has left the water. Perhaps there’s a boat or something....”

His comment gave me much-needed insight into the potential power and threat of how the water spread my scent. It seemed that when I was in the disguise Qinn had taught me to use, or out of the water, I was undetectable.

As I watched the Miengu push himself off the ocean floor in a swirl of white sand and swim straight for the surface in an elegant wavelike motion, his arms taut at his side and his stomach muscles rippling as he moved, the kernel of an idea began to form. The smaller Oceanid followed hurriedly, scanning the blue expanse of water as he went.

I eased out of the crevice only able to maintain my disguise by allowing the current to move me at a painfully slow pace in forward and backward swells across the coral, and away from the other Oceanids and Qinn’s still trapped and lifeless body.

A cascade of dark rocks ornamented in living colour rose out of the sea bed and I managed to back my way into an opening in one of them, hoping against hope as I did so that there wasn’t a large and hungry predator waiting inside it.

I kept the disguise despite the gloom of the cave, watching warily as they returned from their search of the surface, the bigger Oceanid continuing to roughly motivate the smaller to find me.

“You don’t honestly think she’ll co-operate when you do find her?” The slighter one floated above the larger as they searched, scanning the reef constantly, his chest moving as if he were breathing but without the regularity that ordinary breathing produces.

“She won’t have a choice.” The Miengu was irritating the sea creatures, sending bursts of brightly coloured fish and irritated crustaceans swirling into the water. “Neith isn’t planning on giving her an option to co-operate or not, that’s why she’s too scared to just attack him straight on, she knows he is more powerful.”

His statement made me angry, mainly because what he was saying was true and I hated the cowardly choices I’d made so far in Merrick’s rescue mission.

I knew, of course, that the plan we’d made was supposed to be the most logical, the most objective, but hiding here in the cave helplessly with Qinn dead, I wasn’t so sure any more.

“If she is so powerful why didn’t she free her friend from the net?”

The Miengu stopped and straightened. His back was to me but I could see the tension in the thick muscle that ran down his spine as he considered the other’s question.

“Perhaps she didn’t try,” he replied.

“No, her fragrance is all around there.”

They dropped out of sight and I had to use all of my strength and concentration to maintain the disguise and zone in on listening to their voices at the same time.

“Do you see here?” It was the smaller Oceanid’s voice.

A grunt in reply.

“And here and here. This is all her.”

They were quiet for a while.

“I knew this Oceanid.” The Miengu this time. “His name was Qinn, he was in the pod with us for a while, his talent was disguise.”

“It doesn’t look like it helped him much.” A snicker that was quickly cut short with a gurgle of pain.

“He was a good man.”

They swam back into view, the Miengu scanning the reef methodically as he did so.

“She has probably learnt how to disguise herself from Qinn.”

“She can do that?”

A grunt.

“I’m going to report what we’ve found and get some help. You wait here and be alert. She’s still here, I’m sure of it.”

He left without another glance, disappearing quickly into the darkening blue.

I watched the smaller Oceanid as he drifted lazily over the coral, seemingly disinterested in the task he’d been assigned.

As I planned my escape, to dart out in disguise and gradually allow the current to drift me away, I wondered how many more Oceanids like Qinn would die before Merrick was rescued. I hadn’t known Qinn well but my inability to save him had come as a sharp shock to me. What if Sabrina, or Maya, or any number of Oceanids all followed me to Neith’s lair only to die…

Every muscle in my body tensed as the Oceanid swam purposefully towards my cave. He stuck his head into the opening, his eyes darting around the space, a confused expression on his face.

I had drawn back my fist and was about to hit him, making my escape a clear possibility, when he darted out of the cave and swam swiftly away.

I’d managed to move only a few metres out of the cave when he returned to exactly the spot I’d been in, ruffling the coral and sea creatures I’d been imitating to check for a normal response.

This close I could see the faint yellowish sheen that shone just under his skin and watched as irritation replaced his puzzled expression. I allowed myself to drift in the ever-moving backwards and forwards motion of the current, emptying my mind of every thought and pushing back the fear that threatened to blossom around me in the telling water.

He floated upwards into the middle of the blue, his eyes scanning the reef intently.

He was clearly waiting for his partner to return from Neith. And then it hit me, the obvious plan I’d missed. With Qinn’s gifting of disguise, I’d easily be able to follow them into Neith’s lair and then once inside I could free Merrick.

I waited for a long time.

The water darkened, the pale blue fading to a rich navy from the sea floor up. I hoped he wasn’t talented with great sight as well as the ability to track scent so effectively. Merrick had explained the Oceanids’ talents as being single-faceted, with each Oceanid inheriting their talent from their forebears.

As the reef became enrobed in night I wrapped strands of sea weed around my body, allowing me to rest and wait and watch.

I woke with a start from a sleep I hadn’t intended to fall into. The scent and flavour that filled my mouth was sheer agony and bliss at once.

I’d come to recognise Merrick’s distinct fragrance and the delicious flavour that lingered on the back of my tongue every time he was near me, while he was helping me to discover the talents that were part of my DNA.

In the green light of the wooded valley we had been sitting in I’d discovered the distinctly exotic fragrance of his skin and been amazed by the strength of it. In the water it was overpowering to the point that it seemed to affect every cell in my body, galvanising me to action.

The time it took to impatiently pull the strands of sea weed I’d wrapped myself in saved me.

Had I not had them wrapped around me I would have shot forward and into the danger that lurked around me without a second’s thought. Instead, as the last piece gave way beneath my impatient fingers, a current of excitement, hope and sheer aggression flowed into the water incapacitating me momentarily.

They were here. Lots of them. And they had Merrick with them.

I sank to the rocky sea floor and tried to work out how I could get to Merrick. I had settled on an “all guns blazing” strategy, planning to hurl every talent at them in a flurry of distraction while I tried to find Merrick.

“To the left,” a voice whispered in the water. The current of their movement swirled around me as they swam past my hiding place, paying no attention to me as I lay pressed against the rocks.

“Are you sure it’s her?” one of a group of three asked.

“I’d recognise her scent anywhere.” It was Nereus who answered. He was a powerful Traduzir, an Oceanid with the same talents as Merrick but with few ethics to temper his power. He had attacked me on the one occasion Merrick had left me alone, wanting to take me as the prize his twisted mind felt he deserved. Bile rose in my throat at the implications of being caught by him.

I risked a peek above the tumble of rocks, watching as the third shook his swirling hair as they swam away from me.

“You would have thought that the fortieth generation Gurrer would be a lot smarter wouldn’t you?”

Their voices were fading quickly and with it Merrick’s scent. I hadn’t seen him with them but it was obvious he was close.

I slipped from my hiding place and followed them, using the contours of the animal-encrusted rocks and drift of the current to carry me inconspicuously forward as I tensed every muscle in preparation for the attack.

They were laughing when I caught up to them, holding a blood-soaked rag in the current.

“This should lure her a little closer.” Nereus laughed, wringing the rag between powerful hands as the blood curled from between his fingers into a sickening stain through the turquoise water.

The force of the fragrance was unbearable, and I stifled the scream that was building in my throat by clamping my hands over my mouth. It was Merrick’s blood – so much of it – swirling around me in the current.

I allowed myself to sink onto a small patch of white sand, as I half listened to them discussing how they had soaked the rag.

“How long do we wait before we go and get some more?” one of them asked.

“Oh there’s another rag already being prepared,” Nereus replied as the others laughed cruelly.

Fury burnt hot at my centre as I pulled all of my focus into creating the most powerful ball of energy I could make, feeling it form on the palms of my hands and blowing out a stream of bubbles as I prepared to launch it at them.

Nereus stopped mid-sentence.

“Did you feel that?” he whispered.

“Yeah, that wasn’t good, that’s gonna hurt,” replied another.

“No, no that is very good,” Nereus replied.

“She’s very close. Spread out and see if you can find her.”

“I’m not facing
that
alone,” another replied.

“It wasn’t a request.” Nereus’s anger was tinged with fear.

Their immediate movement dissolved my plan of attack. I couldn’t incapacitate them if they weren’t all in one place. I reabsorbed the energy ball I’d been about to release on them with a shudder as it skittered up my arm coldly, and focused all of my attention on disguise again.

They swam around me for ages, one of them dipping into the hollow where I was pressed into the sand, his beautiful face completely inhuman in the water. On land Oceanids looked human. In the water, their skin held an alien undertone of rainbow hues, some, like the Miengu, an emerald green, others varying shades of yellow, red and blue. Their pupils dilated to almost completely cover their blue irises as they searched the water for me.

“She’s over there,” one of them whispered urgently, “I just picked up her scent.”

The Oceanid floating above me swam quickly away.

“You go and see if you can find her, I’ll wait here,” replied Nereus.

I waited, holding my body completely still.

I jumped when my name curled around me in the current, his voice sickening as he described in infinite detail what he planned to do to me when he caught me.

I focused on containing and burying the revulsion and fear his words sparked in me, realising that he must be watching for the colour these emotions would release into the water.

Sabrina had commented once – what felt like a lifetime ago – as she watched me contain my frustration, on how she’d thought that would be useful someday. I hadn’t understood what she meant, but the longer I spent in this foreign liquid world the more I understood how easy communication was, even when that communication could be lethal.

“Let’s go,” Nereus ordered eventually. “Neith thinks she might be using a different tactic. Maybe she didn’t follow the scent from the rag.”

Their voices were fading again as they moved and I slipped after them, relieved to finally put my plan into action.

“I’m not sure that wasn’t her we felt earlier – all that rage is difficult to disguise.”

“Then why did she disappear?”

“She is weak,” Nereus said dismissively. “She places individuals’ lives over the good of the group. I probably would have followed her, if not for that pathetic quality.”

“I thought you hated her?”

“Yes, but she is the most powerful Oceanid ever born and I want to be on the winning team, because only the victors get the spoils.”

They laughed, picking up their pace so that I had to swim with every forwards push of the current to keep up.

“I’m glad we’re protected by rock though,” another one muttered. “I wouldn’t want to be in the open ocean when she unleashes that fury.”

“Yeah, at least at Ferengren there are multiple layers of protection, out here we’d be fish food.”

I allowed them to swim ahead of me, wanting a little distance between us and using the scent from the rag they carried as a guide to their hideaway.

Within a short while they’d left the reef. I dithered on the edge of the life-encrusted rocks and colour-infused coral, staring out at the expanse of white sand and shimmering water. The reef was the only real landmark I knew in the confusing sameness of the open ocean. Once I left it there was no guarantee I’d find it, or anything else I recognised again.

Once I left it I was committed to going after Merrick alone.

His scent was fading in the ever-flowing current being swept gently away and distorting the direction they were going. I couldn’t leave him to whatever cruelty had produced that much blood. I couldn’t abandon him. And so I swam into the never-ending blue, determination and fear warring in equal parts as I followed the trail of blood of the only man I’d ever loved.