Tempest Unleashed (4 page)

It hurt, especially as he started pressing his forearm into my throat. I struggled against him, but he was a lot stronger than I was. Everything my mertrainer, Jared, had taught me required distance—something I just didn’t have right now—so I searched my mind for the rusty self-defense maneuvers I’d learned a couple years before in PE. Nothing came to mind—at least nothing that I didn’t need legs for. And since I’d lost my bikini bottoms in that last shift, I really didn’t think it was a good idea. Not to mention that if it took me as long as it normally did to shift, I would be vulnerable for at least five minutes. I couldn’t afford that.

The more I jerked and pulled, the harder the guy pressed against my gills, until the ocean around me went even grayer than usual. My head started to hurt, and soon everything was spinning. I was on the verge of passing out, I realized with horror. And if I did, it would be game over.

If they’d wanted to kill me, they could have done that already—one teenage girl against five grown men who knew the ocean, and how to fight in it, a lot better than she did hardly stood a chance. But my death wasn’t what they were after. If I passed out, if I stopped fighting even for a second, they would take me to Tiamat. And I had a feeling what awaited me at her hands was far worse than death could ever be.

As things started to go dark, I knew I had only one shot to get away. Desperate, frightened, I drew every ounce of power I could from deep inside me. Then I wrapped my tail around shark-guy’s tail and yanked as hard as I could. At the same time, I drove my elbow straight back into his belly. The combined attack had him stumbling, his grip loosening, and that was all I needed.

Whirling away from him, I threw my hands straight in front of me and blasted out with the power I had amassed. It wasn’t as much as I would have liked—something about being strangled to near-unconsciousness made it difficult to gather energy. Who knew? But at least it was strong enough to shove the four men looming over me a good fifteen feet back.

I didn’t wait around for them to recover. Instead, I took off toward Kona’s place at top speed. As I swam, I heard them behind me, felt the vibrations of the water as they tried to catch up. I wanted to know how close they were, how much of a head start I had, but if I slowed down even a little to look over my shoulder, they would have me.

I felt fingers brush against my fins, and I lashed out with my tail, knocked the hand away as I dived straight down. The tactic didn’t work, though, because a minute later fingers had fastened on to the tip of my tail. They dug in with superhuman strength, and I screamed before I could stop myself.

And then we were spinning, somersaulting, spiraling through the water over and over again as I tried to shake him off. He held on like a limpet and I felt a sharp slice across my tail. It hurt like hell, but I didn’t have time to pay much attention to it, not when I was sure that his buddies were just waiting for their own chances to make a run at me.

And not when his fist was coming at my face at an alarming rate.

I ducked and twisted, managed to dislodge his grip on me a second time. But that didn’t matter, because his friends were right there to grab on when he lost me. A huge hand seized a chunk of my hair, fisted around it, and yanked.

I saw stars, but that second jolt of pain was just what I needed. Anger blossomed inside me, leaving no room for fear or worry or confusion. Instead, there was this overwhelming heat skating along my nerves, taking me over. Fiery, electric, full of rage at Tiamat for wanting me to turn to her side so badly that she was willing to resort to kidnapping to make it happen.

The heat was getting worse, the strange feeling growing until I was literally vibrating with it. I didn’t know what this feeling was, knew only that it was as different from the energy blasts I usually wielded as good was from evil.

It scared me a little, but not nearly as much as the men who were presently pinning my hands behind my back and trying to tie them with seaweed. The only thing stopping them was that I was trembling so badly they could barely get the strands around my wrists.

Furious, uncertain, determined not to be captured, I closed my eyes and prepared to let loose with everything I felt building inside. Some instinctive part of me realized that it was the only thing that could save me. I just hoped I could survive whatever happened—God knew, water and electricity were far from a perfect mixture.

Flexing my hands, I relaxed, letting go of my natural barriers. Then nearly screamed as something bright and powerful shot out of almost every pore in my body—and straight at the five men who surrounded me.

They yelled, pushed back, but it was too late. The one holding my hand gasped and then his grasp loosened. I watched in dismay as his eyes went blank, and he slowly, so slowly, started to float away from me—carried by the ocean’s currents rather than his own power.

I stared at him for one long second, horrified by the idea that he was dead. He wasn’t the first person I’d killed since being in the Pacific—in self-defense, I’d been forced to kill one of Kona’s friends who had turned traitor, not long after I’d discovered the underwater world. This time it wasn’t any easier, despite the fact that shark-guy had been trying to kill me, just as Malu had.

Even as the thought was forming, even as I was grieving at what I had become, I was turning, prepared to meet any other threat head-on. But there was no more threat—the other two men who had been touching me were also dead, their eyes wide and vacant as the ocean slowly carried them away. The last two hadn’t been hurt by my strange new power—or at least they didn’t look hurt as they swam away from me as quickly as they could.

I watched them go, but then my instinct for self-preservation kicked in. Who said they really were running away? Maybe they were just going for reinforcements. And if that was the case, I certainly didn’t want to be caught floating here, waiting around for them like an imbecile.

I started to swim, glancing around for something familiar to prove that I was going in the right direction. There was nothing—no trench, no oyster bed, nothing but the feeling that I was heading where I needed to be.

More than once I was certain I caught glimpses of Tiamat lurking in the darkness, watching me, her long, red hair floating on the current and her black tail curled up like a sea horse’s. But every time I turned to where I thought I saw her, she was gone. Was it my imagination or was she really there, waiting for me to falter?

Just the idea that she might be lurking pushed me to swim faster.

My throat hurt, my stomach hurt, my head hurt—but I wasn’t sure if that was because I had actually been injured in the struggle or simply because I was doing my best not to cry. The tears were right behind my eyes, but I wouldn’t give in to them. Not this time.

Yes, I had killed three people, and no matter how sick that fact made me, I had to live with it. If I hadn’t lashed out at them, if my power hadn’t done that weird electric thing, I wouldn’t have stood a chance. And I could be sure that they would
not
have experienced the same attack of conscience at my demise that I was suffering at theirs.

And speaking of my powers, what had happened back there? I knew that I could call down lightning and cause storms, knew that I could blast out at people with bursts of energy. But this latest power—this electric thing taking over my entire body and consuming whatever was in its path—was new. Not to mention creepy in the extreme.

I shivered, and for the first time realized I was still trembling. And not just trembling but shaking violently.
Adrenaline?
I wondered again, because I certainly had enough of the stuff coursing through my body to power a small city.

But this didn’t feel like the crash after an adrenaline rush. This just felt … awful. Like I was slogging through mud with every swish of my hands and flip of my tail.

My eyes started to close against my will, and that’s when I realized how tired I was, my whole body assailed by a bone-deep weariness. What was wrong with me? Was it the fight? The electric thing? The fact that I had killed three people?

Or was it something else entirely?

For the first time since I’d gotten away, I realized that my tail was hurting. Glancing back at it, I froze as I saw blood in the water all around me. A lot of blood. And it was pouring out of a long, deep cut down the center of my tail.

One of Tiamat’s henchmen had stabbed me.

Chapter 4

I stared at the jagged cut for several seconds, trying to wrap my head around the reality of it—and the consequences. I was bleeding out, obviously, which meant I didn’t have much time before I fainted. And once that happened, I’d be a sitting duck—not just for Tiamat, but for all the other ocean life that was drawn by the scent of blood. I might as well be wearing a sign that read ALL-YOU-CAN-EAT MERMAID BUFFET.

I glanced around. I had to get moving, fast. But I was still about seven hundred miles from mer territory, and judging from how dizzy and confused I felt, I didn’t think I could make it that far, even if the copious amounts of blood leaking from my tail weren’t announcing my weakness to the world.

There was only one place to go—Kona’s. If my underwater GPS/homing-beacon instinct was working properly, I was about ninety miles from the outskirts of his territory. At the rate I swam, it would take me about fifty minutes to get there. Surely, if I concentrated, I could make it that far.

Speeding up, I used every ounce of strength my arms had to propel myself through the water as I tried to give my tail a rest. It took only a few minutes for my arm muscles to get tired, though, and I worried about how long I could keep this up. I could feel myself growing weaker with every second that passed.

Long enough
, I told myself grimly. I could keep this up long enough to get myself to safety. The alternative was dying out here alone, and I wasn’t about to give Tiamat that satisfaction.

Or Kona and my family that heartbreak. Then I would be just like my mom—my father and Moku and Rio would never know what had happened to me. They’d think I just drifted away, drawn by the call of the ocean, and forgotten all about them.

I couldn’t let that happen. I
wouldn’t
let that happen.

A great white shark swam past, its black, beady eyes completely focused on the blood trail behind me. I stifled a mental scream, reminded myself of all the times Kona had told me I had nothing to fear from sharks—even big ones like this. But when the thing made a U-turn and came back, swimming so close that its tail brushed against me, I knew I was in serious trouble. Sharks might not bother mermaids in everyday life, but my open wound was obviously too much for the predator to resist. It was only a matter of time before it tried to eat me.

The thought terrified me—and made me angry. I would be damned if I had just fought off a whole coven of Tiamat’s shark-men only to be done in by a normal shark.

Gathering my power was a lot harder this time around. I was weaker, close to physical collapse, and scared out of my mind. Trying to focus my gifts, to use them to defend myself, was difficult at the best of times. Now I was afraid it would be downright impossible. Especially since that new electricity thing seemed to be MIA.

Then again, when the alternative was becoming some shark’s afternoon snack, I had a lot of motivation to get things right.

The fire started in my stomach, the way it always did, as I gathered more and more energy to me. It was smaller than usual, didn’t burn as hot, but I forced myself to tap into the last of my reserves. They were incredibly low, and I instinctively started seeking power outside of myself.

Even as I tried, I wasn’t sure I could do it. I’d never tried this before, had never even known it was possible. But some latent instinct was demanding that I tap into the energy of the current—of the ocean itself—before it was too late.

Closing my eyes, I focused everything I had into channeling strength from the water. I could almost see its energy—a glowing, cerulean light that wove through the whole world around me. Kind of like a net, it permeated all parts of the ocean as far as I could see. I reached out to touch it, felt a jolt rip through my body that was unlike anything I’d ever felt before—a million times more powerful than what it would feel like to get hit by one of my lightning bolts. Or at least, what I
imagined
it would feel like.

Ignoring the pain of touching a million live wires, I focused instead on drawing the energy inside of me. On capitalizing on the strength, the potency, that the ocean was offering me.

I continued moving, and each foot of the bright blue electric net zapped me, burned me, but also somehow gave me the strength to go on even as it shocked me. I could feel the intensity of the jolts coursing through my body, feel them making my journey easier. Already, I was moving faster, the swish of my tail no longer an excruciating exercise but more like slogging through Jell-O than swimming.

The shark came at me again, this time trying to brush against me with its long, sleek body. It was testing me, I knew, and I braced myself for the feel of it—cold and a little bit prickly against my sensitive mermaid skin—but I felt nothing. Except an odd jolt that added more heat to the flame burning inside of me.