My mother joined my father on the side opposite us.
Caleb and I got down flat against the rocks and crawled to the edge, navigating past the crabs as best as we could. We lay on our stomachs and watched the gentle waves. A light breeze blew over us, causing goosebumps to run along my skin. The quiet was eerie. I could hear an occasional strange noise in the distance, but otherwise my ears were filled with nothing but the muttering of someone in our group and the lapping of the waves. I would have admired the beauty of this place were it not filled with such horrors.
Caleb reached for my hand and enveloped it.
“If something happens, promise me you won’t do anything stupid,” he said.
“Define stupid,” I replied.
“You should be an expert at that definition by now.”
I poked him in the shoulder.
“I define it as putting your life at risk,” he said.
“I’ll try not to. I mean, I would like to be alive for our wedding.”
Caleb rolled his eyes.
I guessed that I wouldn’t be of much use in this environment anyway. Unless a creature actually shot out of the water and I managed to aim my fire before it fell back in, the water would extinguish my flames. The most I could do, it seemed, was help keep watch.
“Rose! Caleb!” Micah shouted from behind us. “Watch out!”
I whirled around to see a fat black-striped snake slithering toward us along the rocks. Caleb gripped my waist and jerked me backward away from it.
My breathing steadied as the snake made no motion to attack. It continued along its path, apparently uninterested in us. We waited until it had passed by and slithered downward, back toward the sea.
“And we are the ones who are supposed to be keeping watch…” I muttered.
We got down on all fours again and crawled back to our spot, resting on our stomachs.
“I was distracting us,” Caleb said.
We spent what felt like the next hour in silence. There was still no sign of Mona.
“Something has happened,” Kiev said. “I’m going down to look for her.”
“You might end up causing more trouble than good,” Matteo said. “If she’s in the middle of some kind of negotiation, your presence might mess it up… Mona is powerful enough to look after herself.”
Kiev scowled. “I’ll wait half an hour more. Then, Corrine and Ibrahim, I will need you to cast the same spell on me that Mona put on herself.”
Kiev’s nerves were getting to me. I was beginning to imagine the worst. Even though I knew Mona was a powerful witch, we had no idea what was within the depths of this ocean.
Half an hour passed quickly and then Kiev approached the witch and warlock. “I just want to find Mona. If I see she is in the middle of a conversation, obviously I won’t step in. I just want to locate her and know that she is safe.”
Corrine and Ibrahim looked reluctant, but they gave in to Kiev’s request. Once Ibrahim had finished casting a spell on him, Kiev removed his shirt, revealing his prosthetic arm, and dove headfirst into the murky waters. I shivered watching him disappear.
“I hope that wasn’t a mistake,” Matteo muttered.
Somehow, I couldn’t help but feel that it was. Although I understood how Kiev felt. I would have reacted the same.
A screech echoed around the rocks. It sounded much closer than any I had heard in the past hour and a half. Too close. I looked back toward my parents. They too looked alarmed.
Now we had both Kiev and Mona beneath the water. If we left, it would be relatively easy for Mona to locate us, but what if Kiev didn’t manage to find Mona and surfaced looking for us? How would he find us again?
“Over there,” Aiden whispered, horror in his eyes.
I followed the direction he was pointing toward and gasped. Through a thick film of sea spray, I could make out dozens of merfolk—male and female—seated atop the same giant seahorses as the one I had seen earlier and carrying long, razor-sharp spears. They shot out of the water, reaching high into the sky—high enough to see above the islets. If I had thought the previous screech was loud, now the noise had intensified tenfold. They all screeched at once, racing toward us at an alarming speed.
My father had seconds to decide what we were to do. Stay here and try to head them off, or flee and risk Kiev being lost.
“Ibrahim. Corrine. Put up a shield. Now!”
Caleb caught my hand and pulled me farther toward the center as the warlock and witch secured the islet.
Sweat was dripping from Corrine’s forehead. “Neither Ibrahim nor I have encountered creatures like this before,” she said. “We have to hope our shield will keep them out.”
We all backed close to each other in the center of the rocks, watching as the creatures came within thirty feet, twenty feet, ten feet…
We braced ourselves as they shot straight toward our islet. Ten soared through the air on their fierce-looking seahorses, but to my relief, they hit against the barrier and slid back into the ocean. My father walked closer to the barrier as more began hitting up against it. The merpeople let out angry hisses, revealing long snakelike tongues. Matteo approached behind my father.
“We are not here to harm you,” Matteo said. “We have come to ask some simple questions and then we will leave.”
I wondered if the merpeople could even understand what Matteo was saying. They continued to hiss and glare up at us as they bobbed in the waves.
The three closest to the front exchanged glances. The looks on their faces told me that they were open to anything but to talking now.
My heart pounded as several of them leapt up toward us again, their spears aimed directly at the barrier. I took a step back involuntarily. Thankfully, the barrier held up, or a number of us would have likely found ourselves with holes through our chests.
They slipped back down, and then to my surprise, dipped beneath the waves and disappeared.
I hadn’t been expecting them to disappear so quickly. From the look on everyone’s faces, nobody had been. But the fact that we knew for sure that so many were now in this area—so close to where Mona and Kiev had disappeared—was worrying. Especially if they caught Kiev on his own. He only had one arm.
“What now?” I asked.
“We wait some more,” my father replied. “We shouldn’t leave the spot now until they have returned.”
I hated to voice such a question, but I couldn’t help myself. “What if they don’t return?”
My father shot me a sharp glance. “Let’s just take this one hour at a time.”
I was about to take a seat back down on the rocks when a chilling sight arrested me. A wave was rolling toward us in the distance. A towering, monstrous wave.
“What the—”
My spine tingled as it seemed to be picking up speed, now only three islets away from us.
“Uh, Corrine,” my mother said, her voice trembling, “This barrier should be strong enough to withstand water, right?”
Corrine and Ibrahim’s mouths hung open as they stared at the wall of water.
“Water, yes…. B-But that?” Corrine gasped as she pointed toward the base of the wave.
Now that it was nearer, I realized what she had spotted. The base of the wave was oddly discolored compared to the rest. There was a dark brown shadow.
“Oh my God,” I rasped. “It’s a… creature.”
Barely had I said the words when a set of jagged jaws the diameter of eight grown men poked through the wall of water, followed by two slanted pitch-black eyes. A spiky fin ran from the top of its head down along its spine and stopped at the end of its gargantuan tail. The only way I could think to describe it was as some kind of prehistoric sea monster. Or Frankenstein’s piranha.
Hurtling straight toward us, it smashed headfirst into the rocks. There was a deafening crack as the base of the islet shattered beneath the sheer force of the monstrous creature. The ground beneath us disintegrated, the ocean gushing up and consuming us. Sucked
down into the water, I feared that the suction of the sinking islet would hold me under long after my lungs gave way. I splashed about, having no idea where Caleb was, or any of my family and friends. For all I knew, I could have been floating inches away from some kind of dreadful creature, perhaps the sea monster itself.
Relief washed over me as a strong warm hand gripped my arm. I didn’t need vision to know that it was my father. He pulled me upward until we reached the surface. I gasped for breath, wiping the water from my eyes.
“Where is everyone else?” I panted.
“We need to find them,” he said.
“There’s Corrine!” I pointed out at the sky to see a battered-looking Corrine hovering above us.
Before she could make it to us, a deep bellow rumbled through the water and vibrated through my insides. My father and I looked behind us in horror to see a mass of dark shadow beneath the water. An overwhelming suction pulled us downward and we were submerged once again in the ocean.
I opened my eyes underwater even though it stung. Ten feet away from us were the gaping jaws of the sea monster. It was sucking us toward it. Even my father was helpless against its strength. In a last-ditch attempt, my father and I tried to summon our fire powers—it was useless, of course. Like trying to light a wet match.
No.
Just as the monster’s teeth were a few feet away from closing down around us, a sudden weight from above hit hard against my shoulders. I found myself being dragged down further into the sea, narrowly missing being gouged by the monster’s lower set of serrated teeth. My father was pulled down too next to me. I looked down to see that it was Corrine. She had grabbed both of our ankles and was yanking us down, out of direct aim of the monster.
Caleb hurtled toward the head of the creature. His right leg was covered in blood and his chest marred with cuts. He held one of the merfolk’s spears in his right hand. I opened my mouth to scream as he made contact with the creature’s skull. Balancing himself above it, he drove the spear through the roof of the monster’s mouth. A deafening bellow filled the ocean as it thrashed violently. Its movement sent Corrine, my father and me hurtling further down into the depths of the sea.
I couldn’t even see what had happened to Caleb. Corrine gripped my and my father’s arms and propelled us upward with speed that would have been impossible without magic. I looked down to see the blood spilling from the monster’s head as it retreated further into darkness.
But where is Caleb?
“Caleb!” I screamed, as we hit the surface. I looked around wildly. “Caleb!”
“I’m here,” a strained voice called. Caleb had just resurfaced a few meters away from us. Despite his injuries, he swam toward us quickly. Corrine then magicked us all to a nearby rock where other members of our group were waiting, many of them injured. I barely had a chance to look around before Ibrahim and Corrine began ushering us all together in a circle and we vanished.
We reappeared again on another islet—quiet, with no signs of the destruction we had just left. We all looked battle-worn—clearly many of us had attempted to battle the mermaids, judging by the various gashes in our bodies. My eyes traveled from Aiden, to Ashley, Landis, Helina, Erik, Ibrahim, Corrine, Micah, Caleb, my father, Matteo… But no matter how many times I looked around, I couldn’t see my mother.
My father’s eyes lit up with panic as he realized the same thing.
“Where is Sofia?” He leapt to his feet and gripped Ibrahim’s shoulders.
“What?” Ibrahim choked. He and Corrine cast their eyes around disbelievingly.
“How could we have missed her?” Corrine gasped.
Chapter 8: Sofia
As I fought to the surface, a slimy hand closed around my ankle.
I was yanked painfully downward, managing to take one last deep breath before my head submerged. I opened my eyes in the murky water and could just about make out the outline of a merman through the weeds. I kicked with all my strength, but his hold on me remained. I tried to bend down to lash out with my claws. He let go of me to dodge, but then another merman approached behind me. He caught my arms and pinned them behind my back.
No.
The first merman reached for my ankle again and the two of them dragged me down. I squirmed and continued to fight, but I couldn’t break free from their grasp. I looked up at the rapidly disappearing surface. As a vampire, I could hold my breath much longer than a human… but not forever.
As we descended deeper and deeper, the weeds grew thinner, the murkiness lifting and the water becoming clearer. My eyes widened at the sight that was now beneath me. I had a bird’s eye view of a magnificent underwater city. Paths lined with coral formed a maze around stone buildings. Gardens of sea flora and forests of tall sea grass were scattered between the constructions.
I was expecting the mermen to begin dragging me down toward the buildings, but to my surprise, they didn’t. They stopped descending and continued swimming with me at this level, past monstrous black sharks, luminous blue jellyfish the size of cars, pure white dolphins, and other alien creatures. We weaved in and out of the bases of the islets that served as majestic columns for the city. I wanted to scream out to them to let me go, but opening my mouth would only hasten my demise. I couldn’t afford to start swallowing water.
We started approaching one of the columns and they began swimming upward again. As they drifted with me higher and higher, I hoped for a moment that they were about to take me back up to the surface, but they stopped about fifteen feet beneath the surface. They swam right up to the rocks and now I could make out a dark hole. They pulled me through it, traveling along a narrow tunnel that had apparently been drilled right through the base of this islet, and I was brought an unexpected reprieve. My head popped above water, sweet oxygen filling my lungs. I gasped, looking around. We were in a cave. They hauled me out of the water and pinned me down against the rough ground.
They tied some kind of rope tightly around my ankles and arms. They were hog-tying me. They rolled me onto my side where I could better make out the cave. It was empty except for two still forms lying in the corner. As the stinging in my eyes from the salt water subsided, and my vision returned, I realized that it was Kiev and Mona—unconscious.
“What do you want with us?” I gasped at the two mermen.
They just shoved me farther away from the entrance to the cave and then disappeared back into the water.
“No,” I groaned in despair. I looked back at Mona and Kiev. “Mona? Kiev?”
No answer. They didn’t budge an inch.
Fear gripped me as I wondered if they were even still alive. They appeared to be tied up, like me, and that was the only comfort I had, for I could not see them breathing.
I lost track of how long I lay there. I had no idea what I’d been captured for, or what they were going to do with me. The wait was agonizing. I found myself wondering if anyone was going to come at all, or whether they just intended to leave me—us—here to rot. I looked across the floor at the pool. I even considered dipping back into the water. But that would be suicide. Whatever they had tied around me was incredibly strong and I couldn’t break free no matter how much I fought.
My head was beginning to feel light—perhaps from shock—and my eyelids were growing heavy. Although I was glad for the oxygen, it didn’t feel like there was much of it in here. It also felt humid and hot. I felt claustrophobic, despite the highness of the ceiling above me.
My eyes shot toward the entrance of the cave as I heard a splash. Green scaly hands gripped the sides of the hole and a mermaid with flaming orange hair and a pearl-studded tiara emerged.
“Please,” I said, before she could have a chance to do anything to me. “You must understand why we are here. We don’t mean to cause harm. We are—”
“I already know what you claim to be here for.” Her voice was much softer to the ear than I’d expected. It was smooth, almost melodious. Quite a contradiction to the screeching sound I was used to these
creatures making. A smile formed on her thin lips. “It is insulting that you expect us to believe such a story. Don’t you think you have insulted us enough already by murdering one of our wardens?”
“It is the truth,” I said, as calmly as I could. “We’ve come here in search of a vampire named Magnus because we wish to end the black witches. You must help us. If you don’t, even your own realm could be at risk from them.”
“Enough,” she said, anger now sparking in her eyes. “I know that you are allied with the black witches. I won’t tell you where Magnus is, so I suggest you forget about that. I will, however, make sure the last hours of your life are as uncomfortable as possible.”
With that, she turned her back to me and slithered along the floor toward a raised platform in one corner that looked over the entire cave.
She reached down to the ground and picked up what looked like a thin tube. Placing it between her lips, she turned to face me directly and blew out in one sharp breath. The next thing I knew, something dug into my shoulder, and then a heat burned and spread through my shoulder to my neck, my chest, until my whole body was stinging. My vision shrouded and after a minute, all went black.
Chapter 9: Rose
Corrine and Ibrahim vanished and went back to check for my mother. When they returned unsuccessful, my father, grandfather and I were panicking.
“Take me back there,” my father demanded.
He stood next to Ibrahim. Before he could vanish, I hurried over to him and so did my grandfather. When Caleb approached too, I turned to him. “You don’t need to come,” I said.
“If you’re going, I’m coming with you.”
And so we all vanished and reappeared back in the area where the monster had smashed into the islet. There were no living creatures around now, from what I could see.
“Allow us to breathe underwater,” my father said, addressing the warlock and witch. “And also make us invisible.”
“We need a plan, Derek,” Aiden said. “If we are all invisible, how are we going to communicate with each other? How will we prevent ourselves from getting lost?”