The Vast and Brutal Sea: A Vicious Deep novel (The Vicious Deep) (23 page)

Without my scepter, I don’t know what to do but watch the silver mermaid wield the Trident of the Seas.

Her exterior changes. She looks taller, her hair as white as the lightning that courses through her body. She stares straight into the eclipse, and in turn, we all stare at her. I don’t want to. But she’s a force of nature, wild and fierce. Her arms look like they’re holding up the sky.

The waves around Toliss are so tall that I can see the white surf rising high.

“Today we take back our oceans,” she says.

Kurt lifts his head to look at me, his eyes glowing. He doesn’t have to say it. No matter what, Nieve can’t win. Even if it means our lives.

Merrows flood out of the court and into the sea. Terrible moans and roars mingle with the whipping winds. The giants crest with the waves. The sea horse stretches its forelegs, its slick mane shimmering in the starlight. Then it dives back in, its tail a prism of colors. Sea dragons screech above us, ready to sink their talons back in our flesh. They fly a careful distance from the giant tentacles that curl and stretch toward the sky. The only creature I can’t see is the turtle with the spiked shell, but when a long angry noise rips through the sky, I know that it’s close by.

“Hey, Leomaris!” I call out to him. “How does it feel to kiss the feet of the mermaid who murdered your kid?”

Nieve snaps her head at me. She’s drunk on power and she smiles with her shark teeth. “Don’t listen to the half-breed. He was there. He could have saved Adaro and he chose not to.”

I get on one knee and face them. Then I stand, my hands still tied behind my back.

“Do you know how I found him?” I ask.

He doesn’t want to hear it. It’s cruel of me to do this to someone’s dad. But he has to know. “Adaro was on his ship, writhing in pain.”

Nieve hisses at me. She sends a threatening bolt at my head, but I throw myself to the side.

“Archer’s knife was stuck through his chest so he’d die slowly, and for as long as he held on, he told me not to cower to her. But here you are. Because you’re weak. You disgrace the memory of your own son.”

Leomaris lunges at me. He unties my bindings and pulls me up because he wants me to fight back. I jab and cross. His jaw doesn’t even snap to the side. I kick forward but he doesn’t budge.

“You’re pretty solid for an old guy,” I say, readying my fists.

Rowdy cheers egg us on. Beneath the noise, I can hear Gwen.

“Mother,” Gwen says, “do something.”

“I promised you I wouldn’t kill him,” Nieve answers coldly. “And I’m not the one doing the killing. Not yet, at least.”

I find the nearest rock and throw it at him. I miss and double over when his knee hits me in the gut. I’ve lost Kurt from my sight. I hope he’s gotten free.

Then I see it—the ripples in the great lake. They’re distorted, like something is wading out of there. Tiger eyes appear in thin air. In her translucent phase, Yara carefully makes her way onto the bank.

“Mother…”

Yara nocks her arrow.

Leomaris raises his sword over his head, thinking I’m too weak to get up. “It should have been you.”

I roll out of the way, listening for the snap of the bow. The onyx arrowhead breaks through his shoulder and he cries out. Leomaris’s sword cleaves two inches into the ground, and I’d hate to think that if I’d been slower, that could have been me.

He tries to yank it out but it won’t give. I uppercut him in the jaw and, as he staggers back, kick him square in the chest. He moves back so quickly that he falls into the pool and doesn’t resurface.

Adrenaline thumps in my ears, and I can’t make out the commotion. Yara lands beside me. I can see through her like glass. The river tribe emerges from the water undetected. The merrows are confused, attacking enemies they cannot see.

Nieve fires away with her trident, but she risks hitting her children. Yara is as fast as lightning, a whirlwind of her own. Beside her is Karel with his axes, cleaving heads and rib cages until he’s covered in black blood down to his elbows.

“You’re late to the party,” I tell him when he runs past me. I’ve never been so happy to see him.

He grumbles, but I catch a smile as he throws a dagger my way.

“Kurt!” A hulking merrow is ambling toward him.

I don’t think it. I just do. The dagger in my hand spins in the air and hits its target between the eyes. As he decomposes, I see Gwen’s face standing behind him. She’s seen me do this before and had to hide her displeasure at killing merrows. Now, she takes up a sword and holds it at my face. The tip follows me as I stand, retrieving the dagger from the stinking pile of black flesh.

“You can’t trust him, Gwenivere,” Nieve says, her voice slithering between the fighting bodies.

And then Gwen, who patched up my wounds and begged for my life, lunges at me with the sword. Sparks fly when our metals meet, the sharp sound of blades slicing against each other.

“Your heart isn’t in this,” I tell her.

“You don’t know what’s in my heart.”

I tap her solar plexus with the ball of my palm and she staggers back.

“I’ll show you,” I say, getting on my knees and holding my arms out. My whole self is exposed to her. “Do it.”

She looks horrified and takes a few steps back.

“Your mother might love you,” I say, “but as long as that trident is in her hands, she’ll love it even more.”

Gwen shakes her head.

“Do you remember how beautiful this place was?” I say, motioning to the screams and bloodshed. “You say you don’t have a home but you’ve always found yourself here in this place. Now look at it. Look what she’s done.”

“Gwenivere, if you don’t do it, I swear I will. Do it!”

And then Gwen steps aside like I knew she would.

“I don’t know what kind of future I can give you,” I say, “but I wouldn’t use you.”

“Mother, I won’t.”

Nieve pushes her daughter aside with a wave of her hand. I lunge for my sword, but a force grips me and squeezes the wind out of my body.

“You don’t deserve your scales. You don’t deserve the blood of kings that runs through your veins.”

Even as I choke, I say, “Tough luck, Grandma.”

She blasts me with the trident. I catch the current with my dagger until it’s so hot that I have to drop it and my fingertips are black.

There is so much fury in Nieve’s eyes that they’re stark white. She throws the trident at me. I try to move out of the way, but a dark force holds me in place. My feet become a tail. She’s pulling it out of me in the most painful way. It’s like I’m cooking from the inside out, stretched out in midair.

You know, when you’re about to die, things really do go in slow motion. My heart races like the pulse of thunder in my throat. My name is shouted from so many different voices I can’t tell who is who. All I know is that they say it, over and over.

Tristan.

Tristan.

Tristan.

There’s the blow of a conch shell followed by the warrior cry of an army of strays.

I want to close my eyes but I can’t. They’re trained on the three prongs of the trident coming at me like a harpoon.

Gwen jumps in front of me. Her magic crackles around her like a shield. Her lips are open, and a thin line of black blood drips from the corner of her mouth. The trident is stronger than her shield and rips through her body. She looks down at the golden prongs covered in her own blood, then at me. Her eyes wide as full moons, black tendrils spreading from the wound in her chest.

A cry starts at the bottom of my heart and can’t get out.

No, no, no, no.

She holds out her hand to me, the dark veins spreading beneath her porcelain skin. Black blood pools out of her mouth.
Tristan.
She closes her eyes and then is gone.

A jolt runs through me like a cord wound so tight it snaps.

When Nieve screams, the heavens rip open.

Nieve screams so loudly that a white light descends over the island. I hold my arm up to block it. The rumbling starts again, and this time, something in the water moves. The lake is one big ripple as a horn breaks the surface, followed by the massive head of the turtle. It swallows two bodies whole from the water, making its way down to the shore.

The creature bursts out with a gallop and rattles the whole island, knocking everyone to the ground.

All except for Nieve, who raises herself into the air, the wind forming a cone around her. She holds her hand out and the trident flies to her open palm.

Her eyes are a white film, the air thick with her magic. It’s not enough that she’s blocked out the sun. She wants to bury the world under the sea. Great waves crash over us, pushing some out into the sea where awaiting tentacles reach hungrily.

“Tristan!” Marty is running under the heaving turtle. “This thing is huge!”

A merrow attacks me. I kick him in the chest, but I’m not up to my full strength and he falls on me. I hold his sword hands and push them away from my face. A blade rips through its head and the merrow breaks away on top of me, chunks of its flesh going in my mouth.

“Thanks for showing up,” I say.

“We were waiting,” Marty says, throwing me a weapon. “Brendan’s ship can’t anchor. The water’s too rough.”

“Stay close,” I tell him.

He nods and runs to the aid of one of his allies. I’m trying to find familiar faces in the mix of merrows. In her beast form, Amada runs alongside her sister, forming a tag team that’s fluid one moment and solid the next.

Something deep in my bones tells me that Nieve is heading straight for Coney Island. It’s my home. It’s the best way to hurt me. I can sense her urging the giants toward land. The turtle crosses the Toliss forest, flattening it to the ground as it nears the shore.

I throw things at her, but she’s turning into a storm at full force.

I try to remember what happened after the sea dragons grabbed us. Where is Triton’s dagger? Nieve thinks the Triton line is hers. I’m not worthy. She’d keep it at the throne. I run for it, but so does a merman from Nieve’s ranks, his forehead inked with the symbols of the court. I stop running and let him reach for it. He smirks then is confused as to why I’m laughing. When his hand starts burning, the skin black as coal, he drops the dagger and it slides right at my feet.

“Mercy,” he says.

I hesitate. This is war after all. The merrows aren’t showing mercy to any of mine. Would he do the same? I don’t have time to answer as the wall behind him crumbles, what’s left of the throne crushing him into surf.

As Nieve floats higher into the air, she hisses a command to her army. A mass of them dive into the lake. “Land,” she says, her voice a hateful slithering thing, “land.”

The turtle has reached the Toliss shoreline, and it steps into the water. I jump over boulders and fallen trees.

“Duck!” someone shouts.

It sounds like one of my men so I drop to the ground and a cannon blasts from the massive wooden ship bopping in the water. The turtle walks past it, creating a small wave that pushes the ship precariously to the side. I can see Layla on the deck, grabbing hold of the mast. She’s joined by Shelly and some of the landlocked.

Then from the sides, silver bodies slither out of the waves. The island is sinking, the water edging closer and closer. The lake is getting so high that it goes over the banks. Arion marches with a group of landlocked warriors and they run into the lake.

“Behind you.” He points.

I throw myself on the ground as Archer’s fist grazes my cheekbone. He’s joined by four of his brothers. In the dark, all I can see are their yellow eyes, and I hear their screams as four winged men of the Alliance swoop down and pick them up. They go higher and higher and them throw them back into the sea as piles of black ooze.

“You,” Archer says. It’s the only word he can seem to get out. He blames me for Gwen. I blame me for Gwen too.

A hand rests on my shoulder and pulls me back. Kurt, wielding a sword he seems to have stolen from the enemy. It is curved and bloody. His violet eyes are focused and trained on the tall merrow.

“He’s mine,” Kurt says, pushing me aside and meeting Archer.

I run back in the thick of it, back to back with Yara and the River Clan. Their arrows never miss a target.

Then I can feel a voice in my head whispering in a strange tongue.

Shelly?
I ask. She was the last one to speak in my head before. But the thoughts are distorted, like they’re not even human.

Above me, Nieve screams like a banshee, directing her chaotic orchestra. The tentacles of the kraken are long gone, the turtle swimming straight for Coney Island. It’s the sea horse that is unaccounted for. It’s the sea horse that’s in my head.

Doris?
I say, unsure of myself.

I can feel her happiness at the recognition of her name. I remember what the nautilus maid told me. I could control my beast, no matter what. Chrysilla knew this. I think this was her own way of stopping her sister from taking the future into her own hands. Chrysilla left me with the connection to the sea horse.

This is so weird, I think. Doris neighs in response.

Uhh, where are you?

“Tristan!” Ewin from the Bronx yells at me. “Why are you standing so precariously close to danger? Seek cover!”

He shoves me behind a boulder where Kai is nursing a nasty cut across her ribs. Marty takes off his shirt and rips it to make a bandage.

“Jesus, Marty,” I say, “you’re paler than Nieve.”

Then he shifts into me and goes, “Better?”

“Cut that out!” I hate it when he does that. But he’s got me down to a T, for Tristan. Every cut and bruise, and the nose that didn’t get set properly.

Ewin pushes both of us away and picks up Kai.

“I’m fine,” she says. “Give me my sword back.”

Ewin turns to me for some support but I shrug. “I wouldn’t argue.”

The tusked warrior smiles at her and says, “You are perfect.”

She turns beet red but takes her sword and steps out from behind the boulder that shields us.

“Marty!” I say. “Don’t change.”

“I don’t intend to.”

“No, I mean, stay me.” I take the dirty cap off his head and throw it into the lake. He whimpers, probably contemplating if it’s worth his life to go jump into a lake infested with merrows. “Take off your pants.”

“Thought you’d never ask,” he mumbles.

“With your scales on,” I say. It’s like standing in front of a mirror.

A black shadow races toward us. “This was not part of the plan,” Frederik says when he sees what we’re doing.

“Can you tell which one is which?” Marty says.

Frederik looks back and forth at us, a wrinkle forming between his eyebrows. Then finally, he points at Marty and says, “Marty. You ate that tuna and it’s coming out of your pores.”

The good thing is that it took enough time for him to figure it out.

“Of course,” Marty says, his voice coming out of my mouth. “That’s your backup plan.”

“I need you to get her attention. Do something that makes her want to chase you. I need her to come down from up there.”

“What’ll you do after?”

“I’m not sure,” I say. “Making this up as I go along.”

“Good.” Marty/Me nods. “I’m glad my whole life is dependent on your whims. I’m so glad I met you.”

I wait as he runs out into the lake area, his feet splashing ankle deep in the rising water. He waves his hands like he’s trying to land a plane. Then he throws some rocks at her.

I squeeze the bridge of my nose. “Oh, Marty.”

A moving shape catches my attention. A fin stuck beneath a boulder.

“Well, look at you,” I say. “Big bad oracle got squished by a rock?”

Lucine hisses at me, using her free fin to try to get me. “It’s a curse, you know, killing one of us.”

“I think you made that up,” I say. “The same way you made up those prophecies to Kurt. You never told my grandfather to choose him, did you? You told my grandfather to pardon his sister.”

She snarls at me, her emerald eyes as bright as beams. “You don’t have the nerve to hurt me.”

“Oh, I’m not going to hurt you,” I say. “She is.”

Thalia, who’s been standing behind Lucine, is caked in black blood.

“Kurtomathetis will never forgive you,” Lucine says, starting at the sword in Thalia’s hand.

“Kurtomathetis will never forgive you either.” I point to where Kurt is channeling all of his pent-up rage on his enemies.

Then I do a double take when I see me yelling, running backward as Nieve comes down from her whirlwind and races toward Marty/Me.

I break into a run. Marty/Me holds his sword up at Nieve’s face, and she stares at the blade curiously. She knows. She knows it’s not me.

Doris neighs in the back of my head, and this connection to the giant sea horse is like trying to pat my head and rub my stomach in the same direction at the same time.
Waiting for you,
she tells me.

I’m coming,
I think.
Hang on.

Rachel appears beside Marty in a puff of smoke. She raises the crossbow at Nieve’s face, the arrow snapping straight to her forehead.

Nieve blocks the arrow with the trident and the arrow’s trajectory switches, landing straight in the heart of a female vampire. She gasps with the shock of the wood sticking out of her chest. Rachel screams and reappears beside the girl. I didn’t know her name. I should’ve. She burns from the inside, her mouth still open, ready to take in a breath that isn’t there. In the breeze, she gets carried away into dust.

Nieve sees me, the real me. She looks back and forth between me and Marty, and that’s when I jump, grabbing her around her waist. Her nails dig into my back, but I push her into the lake where a whirlpool has started.

I need to take her away from here, away from my friends.

She holds on to me as we spin in a rush out of the Toliss tunnels.

Doris?
I ask.
Are you there?

But I’m met with quiet. Nieve pulls back the trident, her scream a long echo through the dark sea. I try to back away, but the currents pull me closer to her.

Nieve is confused as a neighing sound answers her back. I push upward toward the surface and Nieve follows. I hold out my hand, reaching for the creature swimming straight for me. Its skin is like a prism, part reptilian, part scales. Doris flicks her nose up and pushes Nieve away from me.

When I saw the original three kings ride the animals, they were the same size. It was true, that we used to be bigger. Doris is the size of a whale.

Hold on
, her strange animal voice tells me.

And I do. I grab on to the slippery mane, bracing my knees against her neck as she rips through the surface. Above, the storm is worse than before. The sea is teeming with yellow eyes marching toward the beaches.

A sea dragon screeches nearby, swooping down toward us for a good bite of me. When I turn around, squinting against the sea spray, the sea horse’s tail bats at the sky and takes out the dragon. Its wings flap in the water. With another kick, the screeching beast loses consciousness.

Then Nieve is right beside us, grabbing on to the spikes of the giant turtle. She holds on as the creature swims toward the Coney Island shore. She aims the trident and blasts at us. Doris is quick and dives. The force of it almost knocks me sideways, but I hold on until we’re on the other side of the turtle.

“I have a faster ride than you,” I yell at Nieve.

I
want
you
to
get
as
close
as
possible. I need to get on that shell.

Doris shakes her head.

I
have
to
get
on
that
shell!

She makes a terrible sound but takes me closer. The storm has moved with us, Nieve controlling its forces. I remember once my grandfather told me that the old kings shaped the seas, the land masses, all with their storms. Nieve could do the same now. All she has to do is bury the shore beneath the waves.

You take care of that turtle
, I command her. This she likes.
See? We make a good team.

Doris kicks out with her claws, grinding against the shell like nails on a chalkboard. The turtle is slow because it’s so huge. When I’m on its back, I press my hand to the rough skin of its neck, the part exposed outside the shell. He’s bleeding where my sea horse has cut him.

“It’s not like you to hide,” I yell, turning in a circle. I can feel her near me, but she keeps herself out of sight.

“I do not hide from you.” Nieve holds on to a spike, the trident in her hand.

She’s worried. I can tell she’s worried because her pale blue eyes watch the surface of the water.

Now?
Doris asks.

Not yet
, I say.

I walk behind a spike, giving her enough time to strike me, but she doesn’t. She’s trying to figure out how I could command one of the giants without the trident. She’s trying to figure out why the full power of it isn’t hers.