As they struggled to right themselves,
Aidan looked up and saw Halkyone clamping her teeth onto Claire’s ankle, trying
to tear the goddess away from her mistress. Above them, the ghostly white ship
had resumed its descent towards the wreck.
Thetis throat bulged as she screamed,
throwing her arms wide. “Be
still
!”
The water around them suddenly went
rigid. All the combatants, including Thetis’s own forces, were held in place,
unmoving.
Aidan could see Lysandros struggle to
take a breath, and fail. Horrified, he realized the water in his own gills had hardened
as well, smothering him.
Thetis was about to do the impossible.
She was going to drown sea creatures in their own element.
****
Head spinning, Nick tried to focus on
the mers and tritons around him. He couldn’t understand why everyone was just
hanging in the water, unmoving.
What the
hell?
Thetis has solidified the water,
Pythia said,
appalled.
This is unheard of.
He twisted, pulling out of Aidan’s arms.
Even in the dim underwater light, he could see the mer’s lips were turning
blue.
The water in
their gills, too?
Yes. None of them can breathe right now.
But you can still move because of Poseidon’s seed. You have to save them,
Nicholas!
How?
Stop Thetis!
With no other weapon at hand, Nick
wrenched Aidan’s trident out of his grasp and crouched, kicking off hard
against the sea bed and swimming up towards the Mad Nereid as quickly as he
could.
Thetis blinked at his approach.
“The Bearer?
How are you still moving?”
He reached over his shoulder with his
free hand and drew the Rod. “Thetis, please, let me help you,” he begged. “I
think I know what’s wrong with you.”
“
Wrong
?”
She loomed, rags trailing out from her body. “You call this wrong, vermin? I
call it power. I call it
freedom
. And
soon this entire cursed planet, gods and vermin alike, will cower before me and
know the taste of my wrath—”
A blur streaked past in his peripheral
vision. Screaming, Claire sank her teeth into Thetis’s shoulder and tore
viciously at the flesh. The Nereid shrieked in pain, thrashing as she fought with
the enraged sea goddess.
The water softened abruptly. Triton,
mer, ilkothella, and orca alike gasped, struggling to breathe again. Even
Halkyone hung there, blinking hard and gaping like a fish. She shook her head,
mouth still open, and spotted Nick.
Pythia’s presence swelled in his mind.
The trident, Nick.
Now!
Desperate, he brought up Aidan’s trident
and jammed it as hard as he could into Halkyone’s maw, grimacing when he felt
the tines crunch through the back of her throat. Her eyes widened, and she grabbed
the shaft of the weapon, dark blood blooming around her head like a deathly
cloud. He held on until her struggling hands loosened and her body stopped
writhing. Eyes going dull, she began to drift down towards the wreck.
A furious scream made him turn back to
the battling goddesses.
Thetis,
now covered in
bleeding bite marks and gouges, had managed to push the sea goddess away from
her. She fixed a glare of purest hate on Nick, then on something behind him.
Shock and rage battled on her face, and her form abruptly melted into the blue
of the water.
A strong arm slammed into Nick’s middle,
yanking him away from the wreck. He looked up and saw a desperate Liam holding
him and swimming as hard as he could.
Col arrowed next to
them, Claire in his arms.
The reason for the mer’s speed became
immediately apparent as a small yacht plowed through the water where they’d
just been. The boat smacked into Halkyone’s body and bore it down as it dropped
onto the wreck below, smashing into the central section and crushing everything
below it. A cloud of rust, sand, and algae bloomed up, shrouding both wrecks from
sight.
“Aidan!” Nick struggled to break loose.
“No! He was down there!”
Liam held on. “He’s fine, Nick. I can
still feel him. Calm down and you can, too.”
Nick stopped wriggling, frantically
searching for proof that Liam was right.
And found it, a spark deep inside
himself
that beat in time with Aidan’s heart. He yanked Liam
closer, hugging the mer unmercifully.
“Oh, God.
I love
you.”
“I love you, too.” Liam kissed him once,
much too briefly.
“Li?”
Col floated next to them, a battered
Claire in his arms. Severely injured by the fight with Thetis and Halkyone, the
goddess’s ripped skin and flesh oozed a darkening blood into the water.
“Bearer, you have to help her,” the
brown-eyed mer said.
Nick’s relief vanished, replaced by
despair. He pulled free of Liam, touching the goddess’s battered cheek. “Claire?
Can you hear me?”
Black eyes cracked open, focusing
groggily on him.
“Bearer?”
“I’m here.”
“Is Thetis dead?”
“No. She escaped.”
She shuddered. “Are the mermaids safe?”
“Yes. You saved us.” Even in the water,
he could feel himself choke up. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” She blinked,
then
closed her eyes again. “I can do no more. Fulfill your
vow to me.”
****
Liam watched as Col gently laid the
dying goddess on a patch of sandy seabed,
then
backed
away. The cloud around the wreck was still settling, but it was clear that the
impact with the sinking yacht had destroyed it as a refuge for Thetis. Fergus,
Kasos, Lysandros, and the other mers and tritons had already gathered around to
bear witness.
Liam’s fingers tightened around his
trident. “
Chuisle
, are you sure?” he
said, agonized. “Isn’t there anything we can do?”
Nick had settled into a half-kneeling
position near Claire. Aidan crouched on her other side, with a blonde ranger
next to him. “The only person who has ever stopped Thetis’s venom is Ian,” Nick
said roughly. “Even if we could find him, I don’t know if he could help now.
The venom’s too advanced.”
To Liam’s surprise Claire reached up,
taking Nick’s hand. “You must fight her, Bearer,” she whispered. “Fight her
with everything you have. She can’t be allowed to destroy this world.”
Nick’s face contorted. “I will, I
promise.”
The goddess nodded weakly. “Now, keep
your other promise. I can’t hold off the poison any longer. Stop me before I go
mad.”
Swallowing hard, Nick turned to the
gathered mers and tritons. “I need a knife.”
Kasos drifted close, drawing one of his
knives from its scabbard and handing it over. Reluctantly, Nick turned it over
and put the point against the center of the goddess’s chest. He stared down at
Claire, hand clutching the blade’s handle. “I—I don’t know if I can do this,”
he whispered.
Liam felt his torment and ached for his
mate. Nick was a physician, trained to heal and help. To end someone’s life
like this, even though it would be a mercy killing, went against the very fiber
of his soul.
The blonde ranger reached across, her
small hands wrapping around Nick’s. “I’ll do it, Bearer,” she said quietly.
“This isn’t your duty. It’s mine.”
Nick turned tormented eyes on the
mermaid, but she gently pushed his hands away. She moved closer, sliding one
hand under Claire’s torso to anchor herself. “Thank you for everything you’ve
done, my lady,” she said, voice low. “Mers and tritons will honor your memory for
this, I swear.”
The goddess smiled faintly and nodded.
Her body began to glow with a clear shimmering light. All the mers and tritons
bowed in grief and respect as Claire, goddess of those who battled on the sea,
surrendered her divinity.
With one move, Meghan pushed the blade
into her heart.
Claire stiffened, then relaxed against
the sandy floor. The shimmer that surrounded her body expanded, quickly
spreading over the area. Liam felt it move through him, a bright, fierce energy.
Around him he could see mer and triton alike stunned by the influence of
divinity, eyes widening and jaws going slack as they received Claire’s
blessing.
And then the meager reef, partially
crushed by the yacht’s impact with the wreck, responded as well. All around
them, the coral began to grow at blinding speed, spreading over both ships in
wild, beautiful outcroppings. The water around the reef cleared, turning
crystalline. Liam took a deep breath of it and tasted life.
A shallow reef lagoon had formed around
them, billowing walls of coral rising towards the surface. Liam could imagine a
time when the reef would flourish with plant and animal life, Claire’s last
gift to the waters she loved.
When he looked back at the goddess, he
saw that her body had disappeared, replaced by a beautiful feathery stand of
pale orange polyps. Somehow, it seemed appropriate.
He rose into the water. “Let it be known
that this is the final resting place of the Lady Claire, goddess of the waters
and protector of those who do battle on them,” he announced. “She sacrificed
herself to save us from death at the hand of the Mad Nereid Thetis. May the
Lady Claire be welcomed into the arms of Gaia and cherished forever for her
bravery. This reef is her last gift to us, and we shall hold it as a place of
life and refuge in her honor. So say we all.”
“So say we all,” the mers and tritons shouted
back to him, lifting their tridents in salute.
Deep inside, he heard a quiet, immense
voice add,
So
say we all.
Shaken, he dropped back down to where
Nick and Aidan were waiting for him and pulled his mates into his arms. “Let’s
go home.”
“How dare you disobey a direct order
from the First Elder?” Lady Eine thundered. The rest of the Elder Council
were
at their desks, a disapproving audience. “You were
ordered to stay within council chambers and facilitate the investigation into
the explosion at the transformer station.”
At the center of the council circle,
Liam floated with Nick and Aidan on either side. As Liam had expected, his
mother had deliberately called a public meeting for his shaming.
Tritons and mers from the battle with Thetis as well as residents
of the grotto crowded around the periphery of the circle.
He bowed his head. “The First Elder is
correct in that I disobeyed her order to remain within council chambers,” he
said. “My reasoning to do so was that one of my mates had been kidnapped by an
unexpectedly intelligent ilkothella. My other mate followed him and the
creature in order to facilitate a rescue. It was my determination that my
services were not required to investigate the transfer house accident. As such,
I left the chambers and the grotto illegally, and I admit to that fact.”
Eine’s expression darkened even more,
and she lifted her chin as she stared at Kasos. “And you, commander, were
instructed to keep the councilor in the council chambers, a task in which you
woefully failed.”
Kasos stepped into the circle, sketching
out a bow to the Elders. “Forgive me, First Elder, but your specific
instructions were to keep your son safe. As there had already been a possible
attack on the grotto and a definite kidnapping, the councilor’s suggestion that
he be allowed to go to Olympic Cove and consult with Lords Bythos and Aphros
seemed logical to me.”
The audience began to mutter while the other
Elders leveled questioning looks at each other. “We were not aware that the councilor
had approached the Sea Lords for assistance,” a greying male with sharp eyes
and a beaky nose said. “While I admire his initiative, I must agree with the
First Elder that he should have petitioned the council for permission first.”
Liam glanced at Nick. His human mate
looked exhausted and increasingly angry with the fact that a squad of tritons
had required them to detour to Bright Water and give the council a debriefing
on the Thetis incident. “The humans have a saying,” he said. “‘It’s better to
ask forgiveness than permission.’ I decided this was one of those times.”
“I note that neither Sea Lord
accompanied you to the altercation with the Nereid,” Eine said acidly.
“In which case you should have returned immediately to the grotto.”
Liam decided to gloss over the incident
with Whitfield and his goons. “I was delayed by human activity in the area,” he
said. “At which point Commander Kasos had learned about the whereabouts of my
mates and ordered a joint rescue operation with Captain Fergus.”
Eine turned her attention to the
grizzled mer on the periphery of the circle. “Yet more individuals operating
under their own authority,” she snapped. “What do you have to say for yourself,
captain?”