I smiled to myself. “Yeah. I guess my family is pretty cool.”
River paused, wetting her lower lip. She fixed her gaze straight ahead through the windscreen at the dark waters rushing past.
Then she said, “If one of your witches manages to figure out how to cure me, how will I get back to New York?”
“That is going to be the least difficult part,” I replied. “Our witches can transport you there by magic. I promise it will be the fastest journey you have ever been on.”
“And… If I turn back, will I ever see you again?” Her voice sounded strained.
I wasn’t sure how to answer that. “Once I’ve figured out what’s wrong with me—assuming I manage to—and I return to The Shade, you could come visit me.”
She shifted uncomfortably in her seat.
“Yeah,” she said. “I guess so. But how would I contact you?”
Again, that was a difficult question. Neither my parents nor the witches liked to just give out phones to anyone. They didn’t like lots of lines of communication open into The Shade, unless it was for emergency purposes. Still, I was sure that I could convince Corrine to give one to River.
“I would try to sort something out for you. We’ll have your address also, so we know where to find you.”
“Okay,” she said, her voice now sounding dry and hoarse. “Because… Ben, I really like you.”
Averting my gaze away from the controls again, I was surprised to see that she had tears moistening the corners of her eyes.
I put the vessel on autopilot temporarily and stood up, walking over to her and running my hands down her shoulders. I bent down to her level, brushing my lips against her cheek. “Hey, it’s okay. We’ll find a way to see each other.”
She stood up, allowing me to gather her in my arms. She pressed the side of her face against my chest and took a deep breath, holding me tight.
“Thank you,” she said. “I hope we can stay friends even if nothing more… at least, until I get too old for you.”
I leaned down and caught her soft lips in mine, kissing them gently.
“You’re getting a bit of ahead of yourself, you know,” I said, attempting to bring out a smile in her. “We don’t even know if you can turn back into a human yet. You might be stuck as a half-blood whether you like it or not.”
She gave me a weary smile.
I sat back down in my seat and, holding her hand still, pulled her down to sit on my lap. She crossed her legs over mine and draped her arms around my neck. We continued kissing before she raised her head and said, “When we were back in the desert, after Jeramiah let us go free… saying goodbye to you then… that was really hard.”
I brushed my thumb against her cheek. “I know.”
“I… I kind of wanted to kiss you then.”
“You did kiss me.”
“Yeah, on your cheek.”
I paused, thinking back to the time we were within the atrium and I had told River to pretend that she was kissing me. I had gotten carried away myself. “Well I wanted to kiss you even before that. When we were pretending to make out.”
The small amount of blood that she had in her cheeks rose to the surface, giving her face a cute pale pink glow. She smirked. “Yeah, that got me a bit hot and bothered.”
We made out until I’d made her breathless again, and then she sat back down in her seat.
“Are there lots of people our age in The Shade?” she asked.
“Yes,” I replied. “There are lots of people of all ages in The Shade. It’s kind of a place for everyone.”
“You must be the hottie of the island.”
I rolled my eyes. It would be a lie to say that it wasn’t a constant effort to keep girls at bay back home. But that wasn’t something that I was interested in boasting about or letting on to. So I chose not to respond to her comment.
“And what about you, beautiful? I was surprised when you told me that you’ve never had a boyfriend. I would’ve thought that you’d be the target of all the boys in your class.”
She shrugged. “I guess I don’t make myself very approachable. And I’ve had family problems, lots of them. Even if I did get asked out, I’d never really have felt stable enough to commit myself much… You, um, you’re the first boy I’ve ever kissed.”
“Wow… I, uh, wouldn’t have guessed if you hadn’t told me. You’re a great kisser.”
She grinned.
I was glad that she had told me. Knowing that I had been her first was something that I didn’t take lightly.
“You said that your brother is autistic,” I said. “Is that the ‘family problems’ you’re referring to?” I hoped that my question wasn’t intrusive. I didn’t want to pry into something that wasn’t my business, but I felt genuinely curious.
“Well, my dad has been… kind of an asshole, shall we say. He’s actually in jail right now. He’s been sentenced to ten years.”
“Oh. I’m sorry,” I said.
“Nothing to be sorry about,” she said. “It’s just life… He put a real strain on our finances before he left, and my mom has been struggling for a while to care for all of us, including a disabled nineteen-year-old. So I got into the habit of working a lot to help out. My grandfather, he’s comfortably wealthy, and has often offered money, but, well, he and my mom fell out recently and things have been awkward between them… Anyway. I don’t want to bore you with my sob story.”
I was silent for a few moments, thinking about her words.
“You’re a strong person, River,” I said.
She shrugged. “As my mom would say, when life throws stuff at you, you either duck or catch.” She paused, then changed the subject. “You keep saying how you want to cure yourself of your human bloodlust, but do you have any idea how long that is going to take? Or how you’re going to do it?”
If I was honest with myself, since I’d realized that River was my responsibility, and I had offered to bring her to The Shade, I had postponed thinking in depth about my problems almost entirely. My focus had been on fulfilling my promise to River and getting her to The Shade in one piece. Once her situation was sorted, I’d be able to direct my attention to my own problems.
“I’m not sure how to answer either of those questions yet,” I replied.
She shifted in her seat. “I just… I feel like you’ve helped me so much. Is there anything that I could do to help you?”
I looked at her seriously. “River, you have helped me—have no doubt about that. You’ve helped me more than you realize.”
“It doesn’t feel like it, at least not compared to what you have done for me.”
“Well, I can’t think of a way you could solve my problem permanently. I also don’t know where my mystery might lead me, and I wouldn’t want to drag you into any more danger than you’ve already been through.”
She looked down at her feet, appearing dissatisfied by my answer. But she said, “Okay.”
After that, we were mostly silent for the next few hours, apart from a bit of small talk.
Once I felt confident to leave the submarine on autopilot, I caught River’s hand and led her toward the back of the submarine where we explored the rooms—something we hadn’t had time for until now, due to being so bent on escaping the harbor at Colombo. It was much bigger than I had estimated. There were five cabins with single beds, three toilets, a galley, and a small sitting area. River said that she wanted to take a shower, so we parted ways in the corridor. I headed to one of the bedroom cabins and sat down on the single bed, leaning against the wall.
I wasn’t sure what I was going to do for human blood now that we were in a submarine bound for the Pacific. I’d ended up finishing the blood that we had caught in barrels from the blood shower while we were still on the ship. So for now, I wasn’t craving. But sooner or later, I would start feeling the thirst again.
That had been the advantage of being in The Oasis—at least there, I never had to worry about running out of human blood. It was
restocked in my fridge as if by magic the moment I began running low. Now, I had to start thinking about possibly murdering another innocent person in the near future.
I wasn’t sure how I was going to last all the way to The Shade, and then waiting for River, and then traveling back somewhere else, to wherever my next destination was. No. It was inevitable. Somehow, I would have to get human blood. Perhaps stop on a remote island and find some hospital where the patient was already dying. That was the most humane way I could think of to satisfy myself.
I brought myself back to the present. For now I was full, and I had River with me, who would hopefully stave off my cravings longer than usual.
By the time I was finished with my musings, I heard the bathroom door click next door, and River’s footsteps as she stepped out of the shower.
There was a knock at my door, and then she stepped inside. Her long hair was wrapped up in a towel, and she was wearing her black robe again.
“I was thinking how Lalia wasn’t marked with a tattoo,” River said, taking a seat next to me on the bed as she unwrapped her hair and began drying it with the towel. “Neither was Hassan or Morgan. I wonder why?”
I shrugged. “Perhaps because they’d been intended solely for, uh, consumption.”
River shuddered. “Thank God we got them out of there.” Parting her hair into three bunches, she began working it into a braid. “I also keep thinking about that vial in my bag. I-I just can’t shake the feeling that it’s something to help my brother. That dream I told you about, where I imagine having a normal conversation with him, it keeps coming back.”
“Maybe,” I said, “but would you really risk giving it to him? What if it was something else?”
She looked nervous at the thought. “Yeah, that’s what I’ve been—”
The submarine jolted, sending River flying off the bed. Before I could catch her, she’d slammed against the wall. She cursed, rubbing her head. I would’ve gone flying too had I not gripped hold of the bed to stop myself from crashing into her.
As the submarine steadied, I crouched next to her and examined her head. “Are you okay?”
“I’ll survive,” she grumbled.
I hurried out into the corridor and entered the control room. I stared through the window at the murky waters, trying to get a clue as to what had just happened. Something had obviously collided with us. But what? It must’ve been some kind of large creature—a shark, possibly even a whale. River joined me a few moments later and the two of us scanned the waters.
My heart leapt into my throat and River let out a scream as a creature shot up from beneath the submarine. A creature unlike anything I’d seen in my life.
She appeared to be a woman, with scaly green skin and matted purple hair that covered her bare chest. Her hideous face was pressed right up against the glass, her thin lips parting to reveal fangs. She slid upward against the window, glaring down at us through yellow eyes. She moved higher and her bottom half came into view—the tail of a fish.
My God. Is this a…
River finished my sentence for me, her voice choked with horror. “A mermaid?”
She screamed again as the creature brought a fist down against the reinforced glass. She slammed against it so forcefully, I felt the floor beneath me tremor. If she continued to hit like that, I didn’t know how much longer the glass would hold up.
I moved closer to her, baring my fangs and giving her a menacing look, hoping to scare her back.
It didn’t. If anything, it only aggravated her. Now she began bringing both fists down at the same time. I could hear her snarling through the water.
Dropping into the control seat, I ramped up the speed of the submarine suddenly, tilting downward, then upward, sideways right and left, hoping to jerk her off the vessel. But she remained clinging as though her hands had suckers on them.
There was a thud against the roof of the submarine. A few seconds later, another equally hideous creature slid down the window, taking up a place next to the first. This one appeared to be badly injured, however. She had a deep bloodied gash in her torso. It was bleeding so much, it was staining the water.
Mermaids. What are they doing here?
Is there a gate nearby? Somewhere in the water? How else would they have gotten here?
I had left The Shade with a map of gates connecting the human and supernatural realms. Unfortunately, it had later been confiscated by hunters, but I couldn’t remember noticing a gate in any seas or oceans. I could only guess that the map was not comprehensive.
The two creatures began punching the glass in unison.
Crap.
In my panic, I performed maneuvers with the submarine that I hadn’t thought I was capable of in my continued attempt to throw them off, but it was futile.
“Ben,” River gasped. She clutched the arms of her seat with white knuckles. “There’s another one.”
Sure enough, barely a second later, another slammed against the glass. Now all three pounded away.
I stopped trying to shake them off and this time focused on rising to the surface as fast as I possibly could. As the first crack formed in the glass, we burst up above the waves.
These were fish. I expected them to immediately start gasping and writhing, but they did no such thing. Although their natural habitat was in the water, they could clearly survive for some time above the surface. Encouraged by the crack that had appeared, they beat harder against the glass.
I grabbed River’s hand and pulled her out of the control room, slamming the door behind us.
Gripping her head, I forced her to look me in the eye. “Lock yourself in a cabin. Don’t come out until I say. Understand?”
She looked terrified, but nodded and raced away.
A hellish screech assaulted my eardrums as I hurried up the ladder and pushed open the hatch in the roof of the submarine. Hauling myself out into the night, I glared down at the three creatures still clinging to the window. I was furious to see that one of them had managed to punch a fist right through the glass by now. She didn’t seem to be at all concerned about the fact that her fist was now a bloody mess. She was still gripping the jagged glass, trying to make the hole bigger.
Extending my claws and baring my fangs, I moved toward them, slashing the nearest one to me across the face. She howled and went tumbling down into the water.
One of the remaining two launched toward me with alarming speed, her hands outstretched and aiming for my foot. I dodged her, and she went rolling off the side of the submarine, back into the sea. The third one—with an injured torso—had now managed to make a hole big enough to slip through. Grabbing hold of a pole so I wouldn’t go skidding into the water, I reached for her. She slipped through too quickly, and although I managed to grab the tip of her tail, it was too slippery for me to hold onto.
I was about to slip through after her when a squelching sound came from above me on the roof. Turning to face the open hatch, I was just in time to see a tail disappear through it, and then a loud thud came from inside the submarine.
Damn.
Why the hell do they want to get in our submarine?
Rushing through the open hatch, I laid eyes on another creature squelching away from me across the corridor. But this one looked different than the others. With shorter hair, broad square shoulders, and a thick waist, this was clearly a male.
I caught up with him in a few strides and gripped the back of his neck. He squirmed beneath me and twisted round on his back to look up at me, revealing a face that was no less hideous than the women’s. He tried to bite my wrist with his sharp black fangs, but I struck him hard across the face. I was about to slit his throat when I noticed that he was wheezing badly. He looked so ill and pathetic as he lay beneath me, I decided to just leave him there and deal with the other who had made her way toward River’s side of the submarine.
Following the trail of dark blood the mermaid had left along the floor, I found her, to my surprise, curled up in a fetal positio
n in a corner of an empty cabin. The fin at the end of her long tail was splayed out to cover her face. Her whole body trembled as she too had begun to make a wheezing sound.
I hurried back along the corridor to fetch the merman and dragged him into the cabin along with the female. I wasn’t sure what to do with them. I really didn’t want to kill them, but I also didn’t see the point in throwing them back in the water when they clearly didn’t want to be there. It seemed that they would rather die up here. Locking them both inside, I headed back to the control room to examine the broken screen.
I breathed out in frustration. Great. After all the trouble we’d undergone to find a submarine, now we were going to have to spend the rest of the journey above the waves.
I was about to go to River when something outside caught my eye. Bright blue lights. Flashing beneath the surface of the water. Grabbing a pair of goggles from one of the cabinets, I slid out through the hole in the glass and stood at the edge of the submarine. Staring down to the dark waters, I tried to make out what was causing the light. But the moonlight was reflecting too much over the surface.
Lowering myself into the sea, I put on the goggles and dipped down. Beneath the surface I looked toward the direction of where the light seemed to be coming from, and almost swallowed a mouthful of water in shock.
Perhaps a hundred merfolk darted in all directions as blue light shot toward them. Five black submarines were surrounded by dozens of divers in black suits, all armed with some kind of mini torpedo.
River and I needed to get far, far away from here.
I was about to haul myself back onto the submarine when a diver came into view about twenty feet beneath me. He was staring up at me, his head cocked to one side.
Hurrying out of the water and back into the control room, I just prayed that in the few seconds that diver saw me, he had not been able to detect that I was a vampire. I hoped he’d assume I was just a curious onlooker who happened to be passing this way.
I urged the vessel forward as fast as I could in the opposite direction.
“Ben?” River called. “What’s going on? Can I come out?”
“Just… stay where you are for now,” I replied.