Olympic Cove 2-Breaker Zone (36 page)

Claire nodded and closed her eyes,
concentrating. Nick reached through the bars and took her right hand, lacing
his fingers through hers as he resumed his scan. It wouldn’t do a damn thing to
help her, but at least she knew she wasn’t alone.

If you’re out
there, Gaia, please help her. Help us both.

****

Aidan crept through a thickly waving
stand of seaweed that paralleled the reef, staying as flat as he could against
the sandy floor. He’d already pulled a tiny sachet of shark scent from his
belt, opening it so that it would mask his own smell. None of the patrolling
ilkothelloi had decided to investigate, so it was working.

Reaching the edge of the stand, he
paused, evaluating how close he was to the wrecked ship. It was a large one,
much larger than the ships humans would deliberately sink in order to create
reefs. It also meant that humans were unlikely to be diving around here any
time soon. The ship’s sides and railings were heavily coated with algae and
rust, but looked to be structurally intact.

Something nudged Aidan. He looked down and
saw a long spotted shape snuggling up along his side.
“Moira!
Dammit, what are you doing here?”

The moray nudged his hand, beaky mouth
gaping in a fishy grin.
We must have left
the front door unlatched. Dammit to Tartarus, what am I going to do
—

An idea blazed through his mind.
Reaching up, he detached his neckband and wrapped it securely around Moira,
tying it off. “Go to Captain Fergus,” he ordered. “Find Fergus and bring him
here, good girl.”

The moray nosed him affectionately, then
turned and swam off into the deep blue. If she showed up at the station house
with his neckband wrapped around her neck, Fergus or one of the other rangers
would recognize it and know something was wrong. With any luck, they’d show up
with reinforcements.

The only question was, when.

He couldn’t wait for them. Gripping his
trident, he continued his reconnoiter of the wreck.

****

Liam swam as close to shore as he could
before changing into human form. Standing, he saw Col and Kasos in his
peripheral vision doing the same thing.

“Might I ask what you plan to do now
that we’re here, councilor?” Kasos asked, striding onto the beach.

“Go over my mother’s head.” Liam jogged
up to Ian’s cottage, checking the porch. It was empty. He went to the back door
and pounded on it. “Ian? Lord Aphros, Lord Bythos?” he shouted. “Is anyone
home?”

There was no answer.

“Going to the sea lords? That’s a pouchy
move,” Kasos said, impressed.

“It’s only going to work if they’re
actually here.” Liam went to one of the kitchen windows and cupped his hands
around his eyes, peering in through the glass. There was no sign of the blond
storm god or his mates. “Dammit!”

“So what now?”
Col asked.

Liam tried to think. Any member of the
divine triad would have been enough to overrule Kasos, not to mention recruit
for rescuing Nick and Aidan. But that option wasn’t available.
What other divines are in this area?

It came to him. “I have to go into
Olympic Beach.”

“The human town?
Out of the
question,” Kasos said. “Mers aren’t allowed to go into human settlements.”

“I have leave from the council.” True,
it was so that he could find his human mate and thus didn’t apply anymore, but
the triton didn’t need to know that. “I need to talk to the Nereid who works
there.”

Col’s eyebrows went up. “A Nereid works
in a human town?”

“She owns something called an antiques
store,” Liam turned to head back to the water. “If she can contact Lady
Amphitrite or Lord Poseidon—”

“Councilor, wait.” Kasos grabbed his
arm, his grip a warning. “I agreed to escort you to a safe area, which is this
cove. I said nothing about letting you gallivant around a human town.”

Liam wrenched his arm loose. “Right now,
commander, I don’t give a damn what you said or what you think. I’ll foreswear
fealty to the Bright Water grotto right here and now if that will satisfy your
need for rules, but I am not going to stop looking for my mates.”

Kasos expression turned thunderous, and
Col quickly stepped in. “No one is saying you should foreswear fealty, Li,” he
said. “But the commander has a point. It’s dangerous for us to go among the
humans. We could be discovered.”

“I’ve been there before,” Liam said. “I
know the town, and I know where to find the Nereid.” That wasn’t strictly true,
but he vaguely remembered the store from Nick’s description. Dredging up all
his persuasion, he grasped his friend’s shoulders. “Col, I can’t sit by with a
fluke up my ass and hope that Aidan can rescue Nick. They’re going up against
Thetis, which means they need divine help. And if that means going into a human
town, then that’s what I’m going to do.”

Wide brown eyes stared into his for a
long moment. Finally, Col nodded. “Commander, we’re going to escort the councilor
here to Olympic Beach,” he said firmly.

Kasos snorted. “And on whose authority
are you acting, mer?”

“My own.”
Col turned to
face the triton, planting his trident firmly in the sand. Liam realized just
how large his friend was, almost his own height and much broader in the chest
and shoulders. The triton commander was tall, but they both topped him by a
good two inches. “I’m asking you to do the sensible thing and help Liam find
this Nereid. If you won’t, then you’ll have to go through me to stop him.”

Kasos laughed harshly. “I’m a ten-year
veteran of the Triton Corps, mer. I’m no stranger to a fight. You’re a council
scribe. Do you seriously think you can beat me?”

“Possibly not.”
Col flexed his
muscles. “But I’m betting I can hold you long enough for Liam to get to Olympic
Beach. Do you want to put me to the test?”

Kasos’s face darkened even more, but
Liam caught a flicker of indecision in those dark eyes. The triton gave the
tall, burly mer a long, evaluating look, then surprised Liam by shaking his
head. “If I put you to the test, scribe, it will not be on dry land,” he said
cryptically.
“Fine.
The councilor goes to the human
town. And we go with him.”

“Agreed.”
Col looked to
Liam, and he nodded.

They returned to the water, Liam leading
them out and north up the coastline. Soon they could smell the garbage and
chemicals that indicated a human settlement. Cutting inwards towards land, he
led them to the overgrown spot that held the mer cache.

“We need to find the main road of the
town,” Liam said as they got dressed. Kasos had scowled at the shorts and
t-shirt he was handed, but donned them. “The Nereid’s shop should be about half
a mile from the beach.”

“Should be?” Kasos asked.

“I’m not that good at calculating
distance on land. I’ll know it when I see it.”

The three put their tridents in the
cache and pushed it under the murky water, although Kasos insisted on keeping
his two sheathed knives. Liam showed him how to hide them down either side of
his shorts before the three of them cut through the underbrush towards town.

He glanced at the sky as they walked,
trying to gauge the time. The eastern horizon was already tinged with purple,
and the tall metal posts with their harsh, bright lights were on. He suddenly
wondered when the Nereid closed her shop.
Please,
Gaia,
let her be there.

He hurried his pace, annoyed that Col
and Kasos kept slowing to stare at some human construction or oddity. The
buildings in particular seemed to fascinate Col, and the mer actually jerked to
a stop once to stare at a gaily colored two-story building. It took Liam’s hand
on his arm to get him moving again.

“I never thought the humans had any
sense of beauty,” Col said excitedly, “but that structure was so bright. Are
there more like that here?”

Liam searched his memory. “I think so.
Nick said that’s a Painted Lady Victorian.”

Col looked back, craning his neck at the
structure. “What a bizarre name. It doesn’t look like a female at all.”

“Humans are all bizarre,” Kasos grunted,
stopping and glaring at the objects on his feet. “What in Tartarus are these
things, anyway?”

“Flip-flops.
I don’t think
they’re meant for long distances, sorry.” Up ahead, he spotted a cross street
with a fairly dense crowd. “These humans have very little sense of personal
space when they go out in groups, so don’t get offended if they bump into you
accidentally. Just stick with me and we should be all right.”

A growl from Kasos and a quickly hidden
grin from Col were his responses. Bracing himself, he led them onto Olympic
Beach’s main street.

It was even more crowded than he’d
remembered, with groups of families pushing brightly colored contraptions
loaded with fry, along with adolescents on the hunt for an evening’s merriment.
The sight of so many half-clothed young (and not so young) humans was
startling. He felt Kasos tense, and tried to remember how far The Lady’s Touch
was from the beach.
Do I turn right? No,
left,
definitely left.

“This is amazing,” Col muttered in his
ear. “There’s just so many of them, like lemmings. Where do they all live?”

“Some of them are local-born, and there
are places all along the shore where they can rent rooms or even small houses,”
Liam said, trying to avoid the chattering humans as he searched for the silvery
building with its blooming window boxes. “This isn’t even as bad as it gets.
When it’s truly warm—”

“Is that supposed to be a joke?”

They stopped, turning back. Kasos stood
in front of a white building with huge windows that were brightly lit against
the oncoming dusk. Overhead was a black sign with slender silver lettering.
Liam mentally sounded out the English words
Huffington
Gallery
.

The triton’s hands clenched in fists as
he stared into the gallery. “It’s monstrous,” he snarled.

“What’s wrong?” Liam said, hurrying back
to the triton. He glanced inside the building,
then
did a double take. “Oh. Er.”

“What?” Col joined them. His jaw dropped
open. “Oh. That’s … unexpected.”

Kasos was already at the door, yanking
it open and striding inside. Cursing in Gaelic, Liam rushed after him, Col
following.

Immediately inside the building,
stretched across a thirty foot length of floor, was a sculpture of a creature
that looked like a cross between a merman and a triton. While the upper half
was beautifully detailed and realistic, if painted corpse-grey, the creature’s
porpoise-smooth tail was sinuously overextended to an astounding length, ending
in an up-flip tipped with an iridescent green mer fluke.

Kasos circled the sprawling sculpture,
glaring at it. “How in Gaia’s name would the poor bastard have been able to
move with a tail that long?” he growled. “And why doesn’t he have a proper
triton fluke?”

“I have no idea.” Liam moved to the upper
half, crouching down for a closer look. “It’s well enough done for what it is.
At least they got the pouch right, although it’s awfully low on his tail.” He
glanced at the sculpture’s face and blinked. “Looks kind of like you, Col.”

Col crouched next to him, studying it.
“My hair’s not that short.”

“Gentlemen?”

Liam stood as a curvaceous human woman
with dark blonde hair and large dark eyes walked into the room, high heels
clicking on the floor. “Ah, that’s our featured exhibition this week,” she said
with a pleased smile. “It was the sculptor’s MFA degree piece, you know. He has
quite a spectacular future ahead of him.”

“It’s wrong,” Kasos declared.

The woman arched a slender eyebrow at
him. “Oh, really?” she drawled, some of the warmth draining from her expression.

“He doesn’t get out much,” Liam said
quickly, grabbing Kasos’s arm with one hand and Col’s with the other. “We
should be going, sorry to bother you, good luck with selling this … object.”

He forcibly steered the males back out
onto the street as the manager stared at them. “And you thought I was going to
get into trouble,” he muttered.

Kasos shrugged out of his grip. “If
that’s how humans see us, I’ll stay in the water from now on,” he said,
grimacing. “And where in Tartarus is this damned shop?”

With a sense of relief, Liam recognized
the silvery clapboard siding of The Lady’s Touch up ahead. “There is it. Come
on.”

He jogged to the shop’s front door,
pulling on the handle. It didn’t move. A sign in the door read CLOSED.
“Dammit!”

Col and Kasos joined him. “What’s
wrong?”

“We’re too late. The shop is closed.” He
stepped back, looking up at the second floor of the shop. There were lace
curtains in the windows, and a brindle cat sat peacefully in one. “Maybe she
lives over it.”