Authors: Tracy Deebs
Another snap and I forgot about Sabyn for the moment as out came Turisas, looking as terrible and frightening as I remembered. His octopus eyes were fierce, his seven remaining tentacles whirling around his head like it was taking all his control not to reach for me. Which it probably was. He looked like he’d been mighty attached to that tentacle I had sliced off.
One final snap and there he was. The Leviathan. The most fearsome creature in the seven seas, or so rumor had it. This was my first look at him, and I could totally see why he had that reputation. He was a sea dragon, the only one of his kind, and he was the scariest thing I had ever seen. Long and winding, his bottom half was that of a snake with a razor-sharp tail and scales that looked like they could slice through anything. Numerous spikes came off his body at different places, all of which were sharp and pointy looking. His upper body was the spiky head of a dragon, with huge, jagged teeth and long, slit-like eyes. The top of his head was also covered with long spikes,
and while he didn’t have arms, he didn’t look like he needed them.
He glowed silver, much like Kona did. But while Kona’s phosphorescence had a multicolored shimmer to it that was beautiful, the Leviathan’s looked cold as ice. I had the feeling that if I reached out and touched it, even without laying a hand on him, I would be frozen to the spot.
And then, in what was a surprise of epic proportions—but then, not really, because Mahina and I had already figured out that she might be working for the sea witch—Sabrina came out from behind the doors as well. Down here, she had a tail much like Tiamat’s, though hers was as green as my mother’s had been. And while her physical characteristics were much like those she had out of water, in the ocean there was a sinister look to her that was lacking on land. Or maybe it was just the fact that she was standing next to the Leviathan that made her so damn scary.
Just the mermaid I’ve been waiting for
, she told me.
Why did you do this? Why did you go after my family and help Mark find me? What do you want from me?
The same thing we all do
. She gestured to the sea creatures beside her.
Freedom to do whatever we want, whenever we want. Hiding gets old fast and we’ve been doing it for centuries
.
As I looked at Tiamat’s lineup of monsters, I was terrified. Not necessarily for me—I’d come into this knowing that I probably wouldn’t make it out alive. But Mark, Mahina, Kona … they didn’t deserve to die down here at the hands of creatures that most people believed were just myth. I was furious with Kona for doing this, for dragging Mark and Mahina into the middle
of this battle, but that didn’t mean I wouldn’t do everything I could to get him out. I just wished this battle could have been fought on our terms, instead of Tiamat’s.
Then again, that probably wouldn’t have happened, no matter what Kona had done. She’d been planning this showdown for a long time, and after the debacle that had happened last summer, I was sure she had a contingency plan or twelve up her sleeves.
Okay. This was it. This was the confrontation that had been brewing from the moment Tiamat had tried to lure me into the water in Hawaii when I was ten. This was why my mother had left my family seven years ago and why I had done the same just weeks before.
I took a deep breath, thought of my father. Of Rio. Of Moku. Of my mother, beautiful and flawed and gone, because she’d tried to keep me safe. Tried to keep us all safe. That job was mine now, and I couldn’t afford to fail. Not this time. Not when the lives of everyone I cared about were on the line.
I knew I couldn’t wait for her to strike. Usually, I liked to be on the defense, but this time I’d be fending off five of the most powerful beings in the Pacific. Waiting for them to attack first would be tantamount to suicide. Then again, going after them might be as well.
Of the group of them, Sabrina and the Leviathan were the only two I hadn’t seen in action—which meant their powers were a mystery to me. Starting with them might very well mean ending with them. And while I was prepared to die, I needed to take as many of them with me as I could. I had to give Kona and Mahina and Mark, my Mark—just the thought
of him almost brought me to the floor—the best chance to survive.
Taking my eyes off them for only a couple seconds, I glanced around. Tried to see what there was that I could use. Not much. Not enough. But I did find Mahina’s backpack, loaded with grenades, sitting only a hundred feet or so away from me.
It gave me the idea I needed. Focusing every ounce of power I could muster, I prayed that my telekinesis would be strong enough to do what needed to be done. The grenades were all tucked in the front pocket of the backpack, pins secured. If I could just get the pins out, I had a weapon of mass distraction. It might not kill any of them, but it would make a hell of a show. And maybe, just maybe, give me the advantage.
Well, don’t just float there!
Tiamat screamed at the crew she’d assembled.
Do something
.
Shit. My time was up. Closing my eyes for one second—that was all I could afford—I threw everything I had at the backpack. Pins that I had been loosening, one after the other, sprang from the grenades. Thank God. I picked the backpack up with my mind and lobbed it straight at them just as Sabrina and the Leviathan, along with a huge group of shark-men, streaked toward me.
The backpack hit the center of their group head-on, seconds before it exploded. Pieces of shark-men went everywhere, and Sabrina cried out before crumpling to the ground. The Leviathan barely seemed to notice the blast, however, and I somersaulted out of the way just as he streaked through the place where I had been swimming only moments before.
Above me, Mahina was screaming my name, but I ignored
her. I couldn’t let myself be distracted. Not now that all hell was breaking loose.
There was no chance I could fight them all, or even half of them. But if I could get to Tiamat, kill her, maybe the others wouldn’t be so eager to continue the fight. She was the glue, the one who held them all together. I’d seen from Sabyn that loyalties were already fracturing. He might be here now because he couldn’t hold Coral Straits alone, without me, but that didn’t mean he really wanted to work with Tiamat. Didn’t mean any of them did. If I could shatter the loyalties between them once and for all, my friends might have a shot of getting out of here alive.
The bunyip raced at me and I threw a blast of energy straight at them. It sent most of them reeling, but a few got through, spears raised determinedly. I ducked, dodged, weaved, managed to avoid most of the weapons aimed at me, but one caught me in the arm, slicing straight across my biceps. Blood leaked into the water.
It whipped the always high-strung shark-men into a frenzy and they raced in my direction. Terror gripped me. Dying at Tiamat’s hands was one thing; dying at the mercy of a bunch of blood-crazed sharks was something else entirely.
I zipped away, picking up the second backpack as I did and slinging it over my shoulders. My hope was that they’d had control of Kona’s palace for only a couple of weeks. If I was lucky, that meant they hadn’t found all the secret passages and hideouts that I knew about from months of spending time here and exploring the place with Kona.
I turned back, shot bolts of electricity straight at the shark-men on my tail. I zapped a few of them, but missed most of the
others. They were closing fast when I zoomed around the corner and down. There was a tunnel right here. I knew there was. Kona had shown it to me months ago, when we’d still been dating. It was covered by a huge, red rock that—
There it was. I moved the rock with my mind and darted into the tunnel, swimming faster than I’d known was possible thanks to the adrenaline my body was pumping out in massive quantities. I slammed the rock back down after me, seconds before the sharks got there, then sped through the narrow corridor. The sharks were strong and I knew it would be only seconds before they moved the rock and followed me. I needed to make those seconds count.
Branching off the main tunnel was a series of minor ones that led to all sorts of different rooms. This area had been built as a kind of selkie bomb shelter/safe room centuries ago, and I knew if I could reach the main room that I could control a whole host of things that I couldn’t otherwise. I took the second-to-last tunnel on the left just as the water around me started vibrating—shark-men were entering the tunnel along with God only knew what else.
I swam through the smaller tunnel, through the main room at the end of it, through the tunnel that connected it to the palace. At the very end of the tunnel was a bed of oysters, abalone, and clams that was cultivated to feed the royal family. And to hide a trapdoor. Thanking Kona for showing me every cool trick in the castle, I slammed open the trapdoor and disappeared inside only seconds before the shark-men came swimming through the tunnel. I knew this because the room was equipped with state-of-the-art surveillance equipment that showed nearly every corner of the palace.
It had been upgraded years before and sealed off to make it waterproof. When I’d opened the trapdoor, water had rushed in, but not enough to cause damage to the equipment centered against the back wall.
I hit the button Kona had shown me months before, and the trapdoor locked down with an impenetrable iron gate so that even if the sharks found the entrance, they couldn’t get in. Then again, I couldn’t get out, either. There was no other exit.
Lying there in a pool of water, I shifted from tail to legs, gills to lungs. Then rooted around in my backpack for a pair of bikini bottoms. If the shark-men did manage to get in here, I didn’t exactly want to be caught naked.
After getting dressed, I raced to the control center, flipped the switch that brought up all the cameras instead of just the one aimed at the trapdoor, and watched what was going on all around the castle.
Which was a lot. The shark-men had stormed right past the trapdoor and were now combing the halls of the palace for me, spears raised and teeth bared. Tiamat and Sabyn were still outside with hundreds of bunyip. They were stationed at all the exits, just waiting for me to make a run for it. In the meantime, the Leviathan had entered the palace through the front door and was winding his way down the stairs to the palace’s lowest level.
Curious about what he was doing, wondering what he knew about this place, I watched to see where he was going. After he opened a door with his teeth and wound his way down a final staircase, I finally decided. He was headed to a dungeon-type place, much like what Hailana had at the merCastle.
It didn’t take a genius to figure out that there was only one reason he was heading that way—they must have been holding Mark and Kona there. My heart raced as tension gripped my every muscle. I wanted to go to them, wanted to know for sure that they were still alive. And was desperate to see that the Leviathan wasn’t going to kill them right now, for spite.
As I waited, tensed up and terrified, I tried to console myself with the knowledge that it would be a stupid move for Tiamat to kill them now. Sure, it would torture me, but at the same time, any motivation I had for showing myself would disappear. They had set this trap well, had known that I would come to save Mark and Kona. Killing them before they got me wouldn’t make sense.
The Leviathan stuck one of his razor-sharp spikes into the lock on one door and it sprang open. Inside were Mark and Kona and Zarek, plus a number of Kona’s men, all looking the worse for wear. They were chained up, much like I’d been in Sabyn’s dungeon, and completely defenseless against the Leviathan. Which was awful enough to witness. But what startled me even more was the fact that Mark wasn’t wearing a scuba outfit or an oxygen tank. He must have drunk the potion supplied by Sabrina, or Tiamat had force-fed some to him. Either way, he was breathing underwater, but I didn’t know how long that would last. It was another bargaining tool in their arsenal, and an effective one at that.
Tempest
. The Leviathan’s voice hissed in my ears.
I know you’re out there somewhere. Come to me. Come to me and I’ll let them go
.
I ignored him—I knew a line when I heard one—and concentrated instead on studying the dungeon where he was. There
was only one door that I could see, and the Leviathan was currently in front of it. He also didn’t look like he was planning on leaving anytime soon. Not that I blamed him. It was a perfect trap, one he had to know I couldn’t resist.
He turned then, looked straight into the camera.
I know you’re watching
, he told me.
I can feel your eyes. Never let it be said that I didn’t put on a good show
. Then he whirled around and plunged his tail straight through the heart of one of Kona’s guards.
My knees buckled and I hit the ground, hard, as I stared in horror at the selkie who had been alive just seconds earlier. Before I could even catch a breath, the Leviathan whirled around again and plunged his tail straight through another selkie, this one between Mark and Zarek.
The water around them grew saturated with blood.
That’s two down
, he snarled at the camera.
Only eight to go. You’d better hurry—I might slip and hit your precious human next
. He ran his tail slowly over Mark’s neck, and a small line of red was raised wherever he’d touched.
No!
I answered him for the first time.
I’m coming! Don’t hurt them
.
No promises
, he answered, slapping Kona in the face with his tail and raising a huge red welt.
I’m getting impatient
.
I’m coming
, I told him.
I swear, I’m coming
.
Mark was looking at the camera with desperate eyes, shaking his head and mouthing the word
No
over and over and over again.
I ignored him. The Leviathan had called my bluff. There was no way I was staying away from that room.