Dangerous Depths (The Sea Monster Memoirs) Page 7

  He pointed to the map. His finger landed on an open area of blue to the right of Florida. I leaned forward to examine the thin lines making a triangle around the tip of his finger.

  “Oh, dear gods,” Pango gasped.

  I read the tiny words handwritten above Joel’s chewed fingernail. The Devil’s Triangle.

  The worst part about having the same dream over and over was that I always woke up and felt the loss all over again.

  The dream felt so real while it was happening. My dreams were why I slept so much while we were trapped in Earth’s realm. I always gave in and allowed myself to be pulled into memories of Vienna.

  I would never forget our wedding. Dreaming about it was almost as good as the real thing had been.

  Vienna was covered from head to toe in snowflakes. Her skin looked like it had been covered in a glistening, frosted fishing net. Behind her, the pulsing colors of the aurora borealis lit up the dark December sky. She took my hand and stepped into the water.

  “You put those snowflakes to shame,” I whispered to her. “They aren’t half as beautiful as you.”

  She blushed and wrapped her tailfin around mine beneath the surface. “I wish we could skip right to the kiss.”

  It took all of my willpower not to pull her underwater and swim away with her right then and there.

  All of our selkie guests were circled around us in the icy water. Merfolk lined the shore, like a midnight rainbow. The High Priestess hovered above me and Vienna, giving her spiel and making our union official. Our mothers swam forward to wrap sea kelp around our wrists—a symbolic gesture to solidify our eternal bond.

  But that’s where the memory ended and my dream turned into a nightmare.

  All of our guests sank into the black water. The High Priestess screamed like a banshee. Hissing snakes grew out of her head. Long fangs tore through her bottom lip and her jaw stretched down to her feet.

  Vienna screamed. I turned to see the sea kelp branching out and moving, creeping and crawling up our arms and around our torsos. I tried to break my hands free, but the plants were too strong.

  A long vine wrapped itself around Vienna’s neck, strangling her and gagging her screams. I flailed and fought with all my might, trying to rip free of my restraints, but they were like boa constrictors that wouldn’t stop squeezing. Vienna’s eyes bulged out of her head as the seaweed pulled her under and out of my sight. Then it pulled me under too. Beneath the surface, the water was pitch-black. I couldn’t see anything, but it was so hot my skin burned. A fire ignited in front of me. The raging flames momentarily blinded me, but then, in the middle of the fire, I saw my beautiful bride. Her face was flawless and she kept calling my name, but the rest of her skin was charred to the bone.

  I bolted upright.

  Vienna was gone. The flames were gone.

  I was sitting on a beach on the selkie side of Rathe. My tail was in the water, partially buried in the sand. A calm indigo sky stretched out above me. Stars twinkled and the moons shined.

  “Just a nightmare,” I told myself.

  Vienna and I had sat on this beach, and so many others in Rathe, more times than I could count. I turned my head and the glittering sand turned into a mirage of a young Vienna. I wasn’t delusional, I knew it was just me reminiscing, but there she was, skipping down the beach several yards away. She saw me, waved, and ran over to me.

  She looked so real. My mind retained every detail, right down to the sand in her black, windblown hair. “Have you seen all the shells that washed ashore?”

  Of all the conversations we ever had, this one was my favorite. One of the first times we discussed being more than friends. “Yeah.” I smiled. “How many have you collected?”

  She bent down and picked up a piece of sea glass, holding it up and admiring it in the moonlight. “Only one. The rest belong here, on the beach—or in the ocean, if the tide chooses to carry them away.” She tossed the sea glass back into the sand and sat down beside me. “I don’t keep them. I just like admiring them, holding them between my fingers and feeling how different each one is. Except for this one.” She removed a shell from her armband. At first it looked all white, but then I noticed the hints of green and silver. “Feel it. It’s hard and soft at the same time. The edges are ragged, but run your fingers along the silver veins—they’re soft as silk.”

  I rubbed it, noting all the different textures. “You’re right.”

  “It reminds me of you.” Her ivory cheeks blushed and she looked down, studying the shell in my fingers. “Something so unique should be treasured. Forever.”

  “The shell?”

  She leaned toward me—barely an inch—but it was enough to feel the energy building between us. “You, Rownan. I would treasure you forever.”

  It was the first time I kissed her. The first time I had kissed anyone. We were barely teenagers, but I remembered it like it happened yesterday.

  I pulled away and smiled at her.

  She groaned, frustrated. “I was afraid that would happen.”

  “What’s wrong?” Panic flooded me. Had I turned some part of her to stone like Treygan had done when he kissed Kimber?

  “I knew if you kissed me, I’d be forever ruined for anyone else. No other selkie, or any creature for that matter, will ever top that.”

  Sweet relief. “Good. Because I hope you never kiss anyone else.” I handed her shell back to her. “I want to keep you—I mean, treasure you. Forever.”

  Her smile spread so wide it outshined the moons above us. “Forever? You promise?”

  “I promise.” I kissed her again. “Was there ever any doubt? You’re my best friend.”

  “I guess I had some fears.”

  “What kind of fears?”

  She held my hand in hers. “My grandmother says we have a rare kind of love. Love that’s only gifted to the world when the tides and moons align just right, and it happens so rarely. She said it means we’ll be faced with more challenges than most.”

  “You talked to your grandmother about us?”

  Vienna giggled. “I talk to everyone about you.”

  My cheeks warmed.

  “Gran says our love will be tested in ways we might not be strong enough to survive.”

  “And you believe that? The bad part, I mean.”

  “Gran knows these things.”

  I picked sand out of Vienna’s hair. “I believe we create our own fate.”

  “Part of me believes that too, but you know how my family is. They’ve drilled all the fate and fortune stuff into my head.”

  “Don’t worry, whatever the world wants to throw at us, we’ll get through it.”

  She closed both of her hands around mine. “Together, right?”

  “Together.”

  “That’s my biggest fear,” Vienna said. “Losing you.”

  “You won’t lose me. Even if you do, I’ll always find you again.”

  She smiled so radiantly it made my heart overflow. “Say it again.”

  “What?”

  “That I won’t lose you. And if I do, you’ll always find me again.”

  I held her delicate face in my hands. “You won’t lose me. Even if you do, I swear on the oceans and heavens, I will always find you again.”

  I leaned in to kiss her, but she was gone.

  Sand sifted through my fingers as I tried clinging to her, but all I found was an empty beach.

  “Do you know what I fear?” I said aloud, pretending Vienna was still beside me. “I fear you were in Harte so long that you stopped believing I would find you. I fear you’ll never forgive me for breaking my promise to you. I’m terrified you’ll never forgive me for whatever torture you’ve suffered all these years—because I know I’ll never forgive myself. I’m so sorry, V.”

  Some part of me hoped she’d reply. Wishful thinking that her voice would carry across the sky, the ocean, the worlds, and somehow whisper forgiveness in my ear.

  But there was no reply. No sound at all except the
tide washing in and out. I threw my second empty vodka bottle into the waves then popped open the tequila from Jack Frost’s. I chugged until I reached rock bottom.

  I was by myself when I first knew something was wrong. Minding my own business, I had been flying to Echo Bayou, and that’s when the fear hit me.

  The most intense part was brief, but it was much stronger than I’d ever felt before. I had never known Otabia or Mariza to be terrified of anything, so that only left Yara.

  First, I checked the grotto, thinking maybe Stheno and Euryale had scared her again. She wasn’t there, so I flew to Treygan’s house, which is where I found her. I sort of wish I hadn’t, because it ruined my perfectly good mood.

  Yara and Treygan were sitting at the kitchen table with books and papers spread out everywhere.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  Neither one of them looked up. They were too engrossed in reading. I have never liked repeating myself, so I spread my wings wide and flapped them so hard that papers flew off the table and Yara’s hair blew over her eyes.

  “Nixie!” Treygan yelled. “What is your problem?”

  “I don’t like being ignored.”

  “We weren’t ignoring you.” Yara pulled her white hair into a ponytail. Such an odd human thing, the ponytail. I’d never be a fan of not allowing my hair to flow freely and blow in the wind. “We didn’t even hear you come in.”

  Exactly. They were too self-absorbed to even notice me. “You were scared earlier,” I said to Yara. “Unbelievably scared. Why?”

  Yara glanced at Treygan. He watched her with a look of concern. Sage swayed over Yara’s shoulder.

  “There’s another way in,” Yara said.

  “Another way in where?”

  She swallowed. “Harte.”

  “What?” My wings rustled involuntarily. “How?”

  Treygan carried a map over to me and held it up so I could see where he was pointing. The Devil’s Triangle.

  I knocked the map out of his hand, wanting to break his finger for pointing out such a dreaded place. “You can’t do this!”

  Yara stood up and snatched the map off the floor. “We can and we are. You can either help us or not. I don’t want to leave on bad terms with you. I need your help if we stand any chance of surviving this.”

  “You need me? Since when?”

  Yara’s eyes softened. “Have you ever doubted that I needed your help?”

  “Many times.” And if you ever attempted to tune in to my feelings, you’d know that. I should have told her that, but I didn’t want to look weak in front of Treygan.

  “Do I need to remind you that you saved my life on more than one occasion?”

  I did save her from being eaten by sharks, but the incident when she was a child was owed to Treygan. “Technically, Treygan saved you from drowning.”

  “He wouldn’t have known I was drowning if it weren’t for you.” Yara nodded once, slowly, as if to signal the discussion was over. She walked to the table and shuffled through papers. “We need you to help us train and prepare.”

  “Train and prepare? That doesn’t even sound like a real job. I thought you wanted me to come with you.”

  She didn’t glance up from the paper in her hands. “I’d never put your soul in jeopardy by taking you into Harte.”

  I walked over and leaned on the table, trying to make her look at me. “Treygan is going with you. Why is he allowed to go and I’m not?”

  Yara looked up, but only at Treygan. He sat silently at the table, watching us. “Rownan is his brother,” Yara said. “He has the right to go, and he’s insisting. I can’t deny him the chance to help save his own brother’s life.”

  “But you’re part siren. That makes you my sister. I demand to go so I can save your life.”

  She finally looked at me. “It’s not the same, Nixie.”

  “How is it not the same?”

  “They are more help to each other by being in the same realm together. I need you here as my link to this world.”

  My interest was piqued. “Your link?”

  “You feel my emotions, right? I’ve been thinking that you can monitor how I’m feeling while I’m in Harte. If you feel me get scared or anxious, Indrea can calm you, and it will make me calm too. We could have multiple Violets standing by to help with any negative emotions that may surface.”

  “That would be a brilliant plan, except what if our connection doesn’t work in Harte?”

  “It works between Rathe and Earth.” She was so naïve. As if Rathe and Earth were anything like Harte.

  “What if it doesn’t work because you’re dead or your soul has been banished to hell?”

  Yara slammed her palms on the table. “Nixie!”

  “What? It’s the truth! Stop acting like this is going to be some leisure vacation. It’s going to be hell. Literally, you are going to hell. Don’t you understand that?”

  “Of course I understand that.”

  “Then why aren’t you recruiting an army to accompany you? Why are you being so foolish about your odds of making it back alive?” Sage rose high in the air, and Yara’s anger vanished quickly and completely. “Holy Medusa!” I shouted. “Sage is controlling your emotions!”

  “No, she just helps me stay focused.”

  A long, irritated growl poured out of me. “You’re lying! You don’t need me or the Violets to help with your emotions. You have your sidekick serpent to do our jobs!”

  “Merfolk don’t lie,” Treygan interjected.

  I snarled at him. Yara could lie. I had already witnessed it a couple of times since her transformation. He was so blinded by love that he couldn’t see how different she was in her new form.

  Yara replied before I could shatter Treygan’s delusion. “It’s not like that. Sage keeps me thinking clearly. She reminds me that I can’t be scared or angry. If I give in to those negative emotions, I lose strength. My will gets weaker. I can’t afford to be weak in Harte. Not even for a second. My soul depends on it.” She lowered her head and mumbled, “So do Treygan’s and Rownan’s.”

  I stared at Sage, drifting back and forth beside Yara’s head like a kite in the wind. “You better keep her safe, you self-righteous, glorified worm.”

  Sage hissed at me, but Yara pulled her back. Yara smoothed down my hair then squeezed my shoulder. “Everything is going to work out. You’ll see.”

  I tapped my foot, trying to curb my anger. I didn’t want to fight with Yara any more than I wanted her going to Harte. “If I can’t feel you anymore—if we lose our connection—I’ll go mad.”

  “We won’t lose our connection. Our bond is too strong.”

  Pango’s loud voice startled all of us. “Knock knock! I found our drunken sailor!”

  Yara and Treygan hurried into the other room, and I followed. Pango waded through the water and up the steps into the living room. He was dragging Rownan beside him. Rownan’s arm was draped around Pango’s shoulder. He looked like he’d slide right back down the steps and into the water if Pango didn’t keep hold of him.

  “Drunk, huh?” Yara asked.

  “Positively wasted,” Pango said. “I’ve got a contact buzz from all the alcohol leaking out of his pores.”

  “Thanks, Pango.” Treygan dipped under Rownan’s other arm and took the heavy load off Pango. “I’ll take him from here.” Treygan assisted him into the kitchen as we all followed. He dumped Rownan into a chair and he slumped forward, his forehead landing with a thwack on the table.

  “Good grief,” Yara said. “He can’t even hold up his own head.”

  Treygan grabbed him by the hair and pulled his head up. Rownan’s eyes stayed closed as Treygan loudly said, “There’s been a major turn of events.” Rownan didn’t utter a word, not even a groan. “Maybe now isn’t the time to update him,” Treygan said to Yara. “He’s not even coherent.”

  Yara nodded. Treygan released his hold on Rownan’s hair and let his head fall forward, slamming against the table again.
I snickered.

  “I’m going to lay him down in the den.” Treygan scooped Rownan into his arms. “He needs to sleep it off.”

  Treygan’s hallmarks stretched across his bulging muscles. Desire stirred inside me, but I didn’t know if it was mine or Yara’s. We were both staring at him like he was a juicy piece of prime meat.

  “Thank you, Pango,” Yara said. “I appreciate all of your help. I owe you more paybacks than I can count.”

  “You owe me nothing,” Pango insisted. “It was my pleasure. But if you are no longer in need of my gallant services, I’d like to go home and spend some quality time with Merrick.”

  “Of course,” Yara said. “Tell him I said hello.”

  Pango winked at me. “Goodbye, winged Ruby Goddess. Don’t hurt anyone.”

  I nodded, and half waved goodbye, not realizing how much I felt like an intrusive observer until Pango acknowledged me.

  “I’m sorry,” Yara said to me. “We were interrupted. What were we talking about?”

  That you need me. Or maybe you don’t and you’re just pretending you do to shut me up. “If you don’t remember, it must not have been important.”

  Treygan came out of the den. “He’s out cold.” He glanced between me and Yara. “Did I interrupt something?”

  “No, we’re fine,” Yara said, assuming she knew how I felt.

  “Nix,” Treygan said. “Would you do us and Rownan a huge favor?” I glowered, but didn’t reply. “Yara, you may be repulsed by this, so don’t listen.”

  “Oh no,” Yara groaned, but continued listening anyway.

  Treygan stepped closer to me. He glanced sideways at Yara and tried not to grin. “Could you please filter out some of the alcohol in Rownan’s blood?”

  Yara’s head snapped back. “Gross!”

  Treygan shrugged. “We need him in semi-good condition when he wakes up. If Nixie can help ease his hangover, then we’ll be much better off.”

  “Sure,” I said, wanting to prove to Yara that I was useful for something—regardless of whether she appreciated my talents or not. “I’ll drink as much as I can without killing him.”