She turned around in the seat to look at me. “So now–”
Ellie scrambled from the car, cutting off her words. Brow furrowing, Baylie stared after her.
“What?” she called.
The girl didn’t respond, but Zeke sighed. My brow drawing down in an expression that probably wasn’t far from Baylie’s, I glanced to him. Ellie had been plastered to the other door for every minute we’d been driving, and spent most of that time eyeing Zeke.
Not explaining, Zeke nudged my shoulder. We climbed from the car, while in the front seats, Baylie and Noah did the same.
“
What
?” Baylie repeated to Ellie, closing her door.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” Zeke said with exasperation as he leaned on the car for support.
Confused, I looked between them.
“We don’t have to just touch you,” he continued in the same tone. “We have to want to do that, and
trust
me, I don’t.”
The caution didn’t leave her eyes, even as my confusion cleared.
“What’re we talking about here?” Baylie asked.
Ellie’s face took on a warning look. “You need to stay away from him. If he touches you, then–”
“That’s not true,” I interrupted hurriedly. Baylie didn’t need more reasons to be freaked out about dehaians. “That whole thing. It’s just landwalker crap.”
Ellie blinked.
“We have to
want
to,” Zeke said to her again, speaking each word slowly.
“But you can.”
I turned to Noah in surprise. He didn’t look away from Zeke.
“If you
want
to,” Noah continued. “You take away people’s free will. Get them to do whatever you want. You kill them by making them unable to be away from you.”
Zeke paused, watching Noah.
“It’s illegal, though,” I insisted into the silence. “And murder.”
Noah didn’t respond.
“The greliarans say it’s true,” Ellie pressed.
I looked back to her.
“Oh yeah,” Zeke commented coldly. “Turns out the landwalkers have been working with the greliarans. And not just her grandfather; that scrawny cop from Reidsburg was at the warehouse too.”
Ellie dropped her gaze away.
I glanced between her and Noah, alarmed. “Is that true?”
Ellie didn’t respond.
“That’s why his family was there,” Zeke said, jerking his chin toward Noah. “Her grandfather made a deal with them. They stay away from you, they get to kill me.” His face tightened with anger. “After he was done experimenting, that is. Seems that’s been the landwalker and greliaran deal for years.”
I swallowed.
“Not with all of us,” Noah said. “I’ve never heard of that.”
Zeke didn’t say anything, but at his expression, Noah’s face darkened.
I drew a breath. I wanted to know more about this deal between the greliarans and landwalkers, in the way people had of wanting to know more about the terrifying thing so they could decide just how much they should be panicking. But there wasn’t time. Everything else aside, my parents could still be chasing us, or sending the cops to do the same. We had to figure out what to do next, and the last thing we needed was to fight among ourselves.
“Okay, listen,” I said to Ellie. “I don’t care what the greliarans said. Nothing will happen to you if you touch us. It has to be intentional and no one here is going to do it anyway. So please, calm down.”
Her face took on a defensive cast.
“You wanted to talk to me about something,” I pressed on. “Was it about that?”
She shook her head.
“The greliarans?” I prompted.
Ellie swallowed. “No, it’s…” She glanced to the others. “Look, could we maybe, um…”
My brow drew down as I followed her gaze to Noah, Zeke, and Baylie. I could tell what she was asking, and the creeped out feeling I’d had around her earlier started to return.
“You can talk in front of them,” I told her.
Her mouth tightened.
“Ellie,” Noah tried. “What the hell is it already?”
The girl hesitated. “Alright,” she agreed reluctantly, looking back at me. “It’s… it’s about you. And it’s kind of… big.”
The disturbed feeling grew. “What about me?”
Her brow furrowed, as though she was searching for the right words. “Well, um, you know about landwalkers and dehaians, right? How we used to be the same?”
I nodded.
“There’s a reason we’re not anymore. And that reason has a lot to do with something called the Beast.”
I tensed.
“You’ve heard of it?” she asked, reading something in my expression.
“I’ve heard it mentioned, yeah,” I allowed, stopping myself from glancing to Zeke. His brother had brought it up after he’d kidnapped me, as had the Sylphaen pretending to be EMTs back at the cabin.
They’d all said it was coming, and they’d made it sound like it had something to do with me.
“Well, the history is tangled up in a lot of different versions but… it sort of goes like this. The Beast was a force, created by dehaians a long time ago. Back then, dehaians could live on land or in the sea without any trouble, because they had a relationship with the magic in the ocean that I guess you could call synergistic. The dehaians used magic to survive beneath the water, they sustained themselves on it when they couldn’t sleep or eat, and they carried it with them when they went on land. In turn, the ocean’s magic was really strong. It was almost like a life force all on its own, strengthened by the exchange of energy from the dehaians leaving the sea for deep inland and then returning again.
“Some of our ancestors, though, they didn’t want to just live in the ocean. They could survive inland, as well as beneath the water, so they tried to expand their territory. A lot of their people already lived on land, especially on these certain islands out in the Pacific. So they figured they should just establish themselves there formally. But the humans who lived on the nearby islands, they didn’t like that. They thought those places were theirs. And they were involved in using the ocean’s magic too, and didn’t like the competition.”
Noah grimaced. “The ones who made us,” he said, only partly asking.
Ellie nodded uncomfortably. “There was a war. The dehaians fought against the humans, and they were winning, but then those humans who’d studied magic… they made weapons. The greliarans. So then the dehaians made a weapon too and theirs… well, theirs didn’t start out human. They used the magic of the ocean. They contained it somehow. Controlled it in a way no one ever had before. I mean, hundreds of dehaians, all working together to create one thing with a common purpose… nobody had done that. But it formed this… thing. A force of magic that was almost
alive
. That they could control, and that was tied to their magic like a dog on a leash. And they could turn it on anyone they chose.
“The stories say it was terrible. Like a hurricane with a mind, but one that could shake the ground, exist above the water or below it with equal ease, and strike at any target just as its masters ordered. But the thing was… it was ocean magic. It existed as a part of that synergy. And after it destroyed the islands, tearing them apart and dragging them down into the ocean and drowning just… just
everyone
there…” She exhaled. “It turned on the dehaians. Maybe it needed more magic. Maybe it didn’t like being controlled. I don’t know. But it did, and it just drained the magic right out of them. Dehaians don’t survive without that. They’re not like humans. They need magic to live. And with that thing coming after them…”
She shook her head. “They ran. They tried to hide. And when nothing worked, when the Beast kept hunting them down and draining them and never growing weaker no matter how far inland they stayed… they came up with another solution. They’d use their magic to change what they were. To transform their own magical and physical selves so that what the Beast fed on from them wouldn’t exist anymore. They split their own characteristics, abilities,
everything
, and made what we have now: dehaians who can’t leave the ocean and landwalkers who can’t come near the sea. It worked, too. The Beast never went after the landwalkers and it ignored the new dehaians like it didn’t even know what they were. The solution wasn’t perfect, though. Life was still dangerous. The Beast continued to rage on the land and sea for years after that, hunting what it couldn’t find and destroying
so
much in the process. The originals claimed it almost seemed like the Beast
enjoyed
the destruction for its own sake, even if it gained nothing from it, magically-speaking. Lots of people were hurt or killed, just as collateral damage from being in the wrong place at the wrong time. But eventually, it
did
weaken and seem to go away.
“The landwalkers and dehaians, though… they were still worried. They figured that, even if those kids born when dehaians and landwalkers got together
always
died, someday, somebody might come along who wouldn’t. And they worried that this person would be like them enough to wake the Beast again.”
I swallowed hard.
“But the thing was, they
also
hoped that – if that happened – it wouldn’t be all of it. They theorized that this person… well, they’d been born from the
changed
dehaians and landwalkers, in a world where the Beast’s energy possibly still permeated the magical landscape. So while that person might have some of the abilities that the originals did… maybe they’d also be something new. Maybe they’d have different skills altogether. A few of the originals even hoped that, by being something new and yet possessing some of the originals’ powers, maybe this person could figure out a way to fix this. Stop the Beast. Destroy it. And maybe even help us find a way back to being able to live on land and in the ocean like the originals did too.”
She fell silent, looking embarrassed and yet watching me askance with that creepy, quivering, hopeful look I finally knew the reason behind.
And I didn’t know what to do except stare at her.
“They
were
sort of right,” she continued, almost apologetically. “You are like they said, at least in waking the Beast. It’s still weak, we think, but there’ve been storms on the coast, earthquakes detected by deep sea scanners… Like I said, the Beast is a force. It’ll show up like that before we see anything more. But since the originals were right about that, you know, maybe the other stuff might be true too.”
She gave an awkward shrug.
I didn’t know how to respond. She had to be crazy. The whole family was crazy, from her grandfather on down. “I… I’m not… nothing’s happened that…”
“The water around the boat that day,” Noah said quietly when I trailed off.
Blinking, I pulled my gaze to him, finding him watching me.
“That was this Beast thing, wasn’t it?” he continued.
“Sounds like it,” Baylie murmured, her voice faint.
I felt a breath leave me. I wanted to run, but there wasn’t any point. Anywhere to go or a way that would help at all.
A giant sea thing from God-knew-when was after me.
My stomach rolled. This wasn’t happening. There was no
way
this was real.
“What can we do?” Zeke asked.
I looked to him. His face was solemn, and no one but me probably knew him enough to tell how pale, and all I could think about was his family, still under the ocean somewhere.
With the Beast coming.
Niall had wanted to fight it. He and the Sylphaen thought killing me would give them the ability to do so. By taking what I was. By giving it to themselves.
Though that just sounded like it’d make this worse, if what I was fed that thing.
I shivered. This was insane. It couldn’t be real. A little over a month ago, I’d finished finals. A few months from now, I’d be starting my senior year of high school.
If I survived. If what I was didn’t destroy the world first.
“I’m not sure,” Ellie replied. “But not all the landwalker elders are like my grandfather,” she continued hastily at Zeke’s expression. “I learn from one during the year. Sort of an apprenticeship, I guess you could call it. But Olivia isn’t like Grandpa. She believes in the old stories. She’ll know what to do.”
The words didn’t make me relax. I didn’t exactly have the best track record with most people who found out what I really was, present company excluded. The majority of them had just ended up wanting to kill or dissect me.
That didn’t really leave me feeling like trusting anyone with the information.
“You can’t go back to the ocean, though,” Ellie continued to me.
I looked to her. “What?”
She blinked at me. “The Beast draws on what you are. If you go back…”
I turned away. Right. I was being stupid.
My gaze found Zeke again. He glanced over, meeting my eyes.
He had to leave, though. Even more than before, Ina and Jirral would need his help now.
“Then I guess we should–” I began.
“Where is this place?” Zeke interrupted, turning to Ellie.
The girl shifted her weight nervously. “Fort Pedrosa, in southern Colorado.”
Zeke nodded. “And the best chance we have of stopping this thing is there?”
“I hope,” she answered.
He nodded.
I swallowed. I didn’t want him to leave. I didn’t know what would happen if he stayed.
But he didn’t look to me again. His face as somber as ever, Zeke glanced to the others.
“Alright, then,” he said. “Who’s up for saving the world?”
###
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Other titles
The Children and the Blood trilogy
(published under the name Megan Joel Peterson)
About the author
Skye Malone is a fantasy and paranormal romance author, which means she spends most of her time not-quite-convinced that the things she imagines couldn't actually exist.