Leashing the Tempest (5 page)

“Not that I know of. If she's got a weakness, I've never discovered it. And I've been dealing with her for almost twenty years. Best thing you can do is hide.”

Screw that. I wasn't sitting around in this tiny room waiting for someone to spot us. God only knew where we were, and the last thing the captain had told us before Jupe messed with his mind was that nothing was on the radar for miles.

I considered our options. I had a series of sigils on my inner arm tattooed in white ink: one of them was a temporary spell that could render me nearly invisible. Might be able to use this to find the handheld VHF radio, but I wasn't entirely sure how well it covered up scent. Wasn't sure I wanted to find out, either.

Even if I could make it back without her attacking me, even if we could radio for help, what would happen when help came? If the captain was right, and she'd taken down his other passengers, what would she do to the rescue team? Or to us?

I wasn't taking a chance. Not with my family and friend on the boat.

Still, there was something I could do, and it hadn't failed me yet.

“Can you still use your weather knack?” I asked the captain.

“Yes.”

I held up a hand and shook my head. “Don't use it quite yet.”

“Why?”

“Your mermaid is Æthyric. And that means she can be bound.”

“That's how they transported her here from Russia,” the captain agreed.

I gave him a tight smile and reached inside my jacket pocket. “Let's set a trap, shall we?”

I
t was a pain in the ass, what with the cramped space and the boat rocking and the pressure of being moments away from death at sea, but I managed to draw an Æthyric level binding triangle on the floor of the captain's quarters with a broken stick of red ocher chalk. Everyone but the old man sat on the narrow bunk, an unhappy audience squished together like sardines.

“Okay, Christie. Ready to play bait?”

Sweat beaded on the bridge of his nose. “Not really.”

“Stand here,” I instructed, ignoring him and pointing a narrow space between the base of the triangle and the outer cabin wall.

“You sure you can trap her? She's fast.”

“I'm sure.” I wasn't.

Caduceus in one hand, I knelt by the side of the door on the other side of my handiwork, which amounted to a potent series of scrawled arcane symbols and words forming three sides of the trap and ready to be awakened with magick. After loosening my neck, I exhaled and wielded a pocketknife I'd borrowed from Lon. It only took a few quick gouges to scratch out an integral symbol on the doorframe that had been holding the cloaking spell together. Without it, the bright-white Heka charging the spell fizzled, popped, and faded.

I dropped the pocketknife and unlocked the door. Slid it open. Crouched out of sight.

We were now sitting ducks.

Some kinds of magick are semi-permanent and all-inclusive, like the ward on the yacht and the cloaking spell: when activated, they can be crossed freely. As long as the cloaking spell was charged and the symbols intact, you could step in and out of the room without worrying about breaking the spell. It's like a public park: anyone can use it.

But a binding trap is different. It's temporary, and it has a one-way charge. As long as the charge is active, whatever is trapped inside it cannot leave; however, it can be broken from the
outside
. All it took was a single toe over the triangle's border to fizzle the charge.

This meant that I had to light the charge while the demon was inside the trap. That could be tricky. If I didn't trap the Rusalka mermaid in time, she could move right through the uncharged trap and attack the captain. I had a tiny window to charge it while she was standing inside the triangle . . . before she wised up to the situation.

It was a risk, sure, but so were our other choices. I looked up at Jupe, who would, if I failed, have to rely on Lon's flare gun to protect him from the Rusalka. I hoped to God it wouldn't come to that.

My hands shook. Heart hammered against my rib cage. I waited, muscles straining, as I listened for movement outside the quarters.

It didn't take long.

I heard a clatter in the salon. The sound of flesh slapping on kitchen tile. And when a bolt of lightning briefly cast her slithering shadow along the far wall of the corridor, I held my breath and braced myself.

A pair of large, flat feet stepped through the doorway. The skin was covered in glossy, iridescent scales the color of dried seaweed. The bone structure of her legs was decidedly nonhuman: the two legs almost melded together as one when her feet were aligned.

And it only got stranger above the waist.

She had small breasts, a curvy, hourglass waist, and long arms ending in webbed fingers. And sitting on her shoulders like a mythological dragon or something out of a Lovecraft story were three slender necks bearing the three heads I'd earlier seen in silhouette.

I'd summoned a few demons with weird appendages: tails, cloven hooves, wings . . . but I'd never seen a multi-headed demon outside a medieval engraving in a musty goetic tome.

And the faces on the three heads weren't ugly. Despite being hairless and covered in brackish scales, her faces were quite lovely. All three of them.

“Richard,” she said from each her mouths, slightly out of sync. Her voices were roughly etched with a strange vibrato. Rows of gills lining the sloping tops of her shoulders opened and closed when she talked.

“Hello, Onna,” the captain replied nervously.

“Where ever have you been?”

She stepped farther into the room as Christie crushed himself against the wall. She had one foot in the binding. I just needed her to take one more step.

“You are hurt,” one of her heads said, craning to see him better with shiny black eyes that didn't blink.

“Uh . . . yes . . .”

She held out a hand and stepped into the middle of the triangle.

Bingo.

I reached out for current. The source I'd tapped for the cloaking spell was almost dry, but that's why I wanted Christie's weather knack on idle until I was finished. I concentrated and searched farther away, waiting to catch something in the storm. I found it almost immediately and tugged.

Lightning was so raw and wild. It fluctuated. Ebbed and flowed. One second I was pulling as hard as I could and getting nothing—the next I was flooded with current. My insides roiled. Skin itched. Breath stolen. Heka roared inside me, bouncing around my cells as it sucked in the electricity I was siphoning.

One of the Rusalka's heads snapped toward me.
Crud
.

I wasn't ready—I needed more Heka. The captain was supposed to distract her—we'd discussed this. He knew I needed time to charge the trap. The bastard was too caught up in his own cold sweat to help me.

“Hey!” Lon shouted, redirecting her attention.

Helpful, but not ideal. Lon could handle himself, but I didn't want the creature's attention shifting beyond him, where Kar Yee's and Jupe's faces peered from their hiding place at the foot of the bunk.

All the hairs on my body stood on end, and I felt as if I might implode. That was my saturation point.

Just as the creature hunched down and prepared to attack Lon, I touched the chalked edge of the triangle with the tip of the caduceus and pushed.

Heka flew through the wooden stave and lit up the trap like a spotlight in a Broadway show.

She tried to leap at Lon and slammed into the magical barrier.

Got her!

An eerie, out-of-tune keening echoed through the cabin as she looked down and realized what had happened. But I was too busy feeling sick to boast more than a fleeting bit of triumph. My stomach dropped and knotted in pain, bringing tears to my eyes. I balled up like a cooked shrimp outside the trap, half certain that I'd seriously injured myself. Maybe the lightning strike on the bridge had done more damage to me than I'd originally thought.

Lon's voice rumbled near my ear. “Breathe.”

As his warm hand rested on my back, I forced myself to calm down and follow his instruction. Breathing was good. Breathing was normal. My muscles eventually slacked. Insides unknotted. I stretched out of my I'm-going-to-die position and rolled over to face the demon. Roaring like a caged tiger, she railed against the barrier in a whirlwind of impossibly fast kicks and punches, gills rapidly opening and closing, teeth gnashing.

“You tricked me,” the Rusalka said to Christie in her triple voice.

“I'm sorry,” he said, still flattened against the wall as if he didn't trust the trap.

All three heads lunged toward him as she pointed a webbed finger at his face. “We have a pact. You hid from me. You tricked me.”

“Now, Onna . . . I, uh . . .”

I slanted a glance at the captain as Lon helped me to my feet. “What is she talking about?”

Onna's heads rotated toward me. “Who are you?”

“I'm the one who trapped you. You are bound by me so you must answer me honestly.” A simplified version of a standard magical contract that magicians had been using for hundreds of years.

“Are you Richard's lover?” Onna asked.

“What? God, no.”

“She's just a passenger,” the captain said.

Onna's left head rotated toward me. “But she's a mage.”

“And something else,” the middle one added, her eyes narrowing suspiciously.

The third head joined the other two, and they spoke in unison again. “If I am bound by rules, then so are you, mage. This Earthbound man has entered into a pact with me that he dishonored. I demand you release me from this prison and allow me vengeance.”

I glanced at Christie. “What is she talking about? You didn't say anything about a pact.”

“Yes, well, I'm not sure it was exactly a
pact,
per se. It was more like a gentleman's agreement—”

“Lies!” Onna's three heads shouted. “I gave you my body to consummate our agreement.”

Several of us groaned at the same time.

“Captain Christie!” I prompted.

He looked at me, wiped his sweaty forehead with the sleeve of his shirt, then looked to Lon. “Come on. Think about it—three mouths. How could I resist?”

“Gross,” Jupe murmured from the bunk.

Great. Now he'd be asking about
that
later.

“Did you make an agreement with her in exchange for sex?” I asked the captain.

“My body was not the bargain,” the demon said. “It was the seal. The bargain was that I would teach him ancient secrets about dark magicks.”

Some Æthyric demons had magical knowledge: it was the main reason magicians summoned them, to learn new tricks. “What kind of magick?”

One head swiveled in my direction. “Magick to control the weather.”

“You've got to be kidding me,” Kar Yee mumbled.

“You aren't really a cloudbuster?” I asked. “That's not your natural knack?”

The captain offered me a sheepish smile. “I don't have a knack. She taught me a simple trick, that's all. And it doesn't work like I thought it would—it only keeps clouds away. I can't change the temperature or make it rain.”

“It keeps
storm
clouds away,” Lon corrected, looking out the small, round window over the bunk, where a sliver of blue sky was beginning to clear around the yacht. “That's a pretty fucking handy knack for a sailor to have.”

“I did not trick him,” the demon said. “I taught him everything I knew.”

“In exchange for what?” I asked.

Onna tucked all three chins close to her necks and stared down at the captain with a look of defiance. “That he would be my husband.”

O
-o-ohh
. Now the whole pact-sealed-with-consummation made more sense.

Kar Yee, the pragmatist, asked the most pertinent, nonsexual question we all were thinking: “He can't live underwater—how was he supposed to be your husband?”

“Our agreement was that he would visit me once a fortnight,” the first head explained.

“He only upheld the bargain for one year,” the second added.

“He promised me a lifetime,” said the third.

“I was young and reckless,” the captain argued.

“You were thirty and eight years,” Onna said in unison.

He tried again. “I was doing a lot of coke. I wasn't in my right mind. I didn't think she really meant
forever,
you know? Then I got set up by that damned hedonist erotic cruise company and went to jail for six months . . .” He turned to Lon with a thoroughly misguided help-a-brother-out look. “Nothing lasts forever. Everyone deserves a second chance. I mean, obviously that kid isn't hers,” he said, nodding back at me. “Everyone makes mistakes, right?”

Lon gave the captain a look black enough to wilt flowers. “My kid is not a mistake.”

“There is no mistake,” the three demon heads said. “You understood the bargain, Richard. I did not force you to make this agreement. You entered into it willingly.” The heads swiveled toward me. “And
you
cannot keep me here forever. This trap will eventually break, and when it does, I will take my revenge on everyone here unless you free me willingly and give me my Richard.”

“Whoa,” I said. “Don't threaten me.
I
didn't wiggle out of a bargain with you. And if we wait for a few hours, when night falls I can solve everyone's problems and send you back to the Æthyr.”

The captain stood taller. “You can do that? Send her back?”

“She did not summon me,” the demon said. “Therefore she cannot send me back.”

“Yeah, well, you don't know me: I rack up a few extra skills when the moon's out, so that little rule doesn't apply. I've sent others back. I reckon I can send you, too.”

At that Onna turned from haughty to pleading, sounding almost like a teenage girl. “No! I do not want to go back! This is my home now, and I've done nothing wrong!”

“You killed those two women!” the captain said.

“They were whores, not women. And I was protecting what was rightfully mine.”

“Diz-amn,” Jupe whispered.

The captain scooted down the wall, sidestepping the binding. “You have to send her back or she'll kill me. Probably kill you all, too. That's why I had the ward built. Once she's got your scent, she'll never let you go. First it was just my room, for some privacy. Then I had to do the whole ship.”

“Or I could just let her have you,” I said.

The captain's mouth fell open. “You wouldn't.”

He was right about that. I glanced at Jupe. That would be a fine lesson to teach the kid.

No, I wasn't going to feed the captain to the demon, though it was awfully tempting. I mean, on one hand, he was an asshole and had put us all in danger by not being upfront about his boat being a magnet for pissed-off three-headed zombie mermaids he'd screwed over. Then again, Jupe was the one who turned the captain into a temporary coma patient—which was the reason his weather trick stopped working and lightning took out the ward . . . so it was pretty much the kid's fault this all happened.

And if I'd learned one thing from my short time with Lon, it was that it's
never
the kid's fault. Sure, he'd get grounded later when—if—we made it home. But whatever brand of crazy trouble Jupe managed to kick up, Lon always took the blame. “My kid, my problem” he always said.

Even if I wasn't the birth mother, I supposed Lon's problem was my problem now, too.

But did the Rusalka deserve to be sent back to the Æthyr? After all, she was the wronged party in this whole creepy scenario.

“I may not continue to exist if you send me back,” she said, as if sensing my sympathy.

Super. Now I was supposed to worry about a dead demon not being able to live her carefree zombie life? “Look,” I said, feeling more like a divorce counselor than a mage. “Why do you even want this guy? Look at him. He's fat and balding and old—”

“I'm only fifty,” he argued.

I shot him an annoyed look.
Trying to help you, Mr. Hotlegs.

“The point is, he's no prize. He's probably going to drop dead of a drug-induced heart attack before the next decade's over.”

“His body pleases me,” the demon said.

“I'm going to be sick,” Kar Yee mumbled.

“Now I understand why people need a safe word,” Jupe added. “Because if I had one, I'd sure as hell be saying it right now.”

Lon groaned. This was not something any of us wanted to picture.

I pinched the bridge of my nose, then tried to reason with the demon again. “All I'm saying is that he's not your soul mate. You deserve better than this. You deserve a husband that cares about you. Someone who wants to, uh, visit you every fortnight or so.”

“You can do better,” Kar Yee said. “A
lot
better.”

I shrugged at the demon. “You don't really want this deadbeat. Do you?”

Three heads turned toward the captain, all of them wearing angry frowns. After a long moment, she said, “I suppose not.”

The captain slumped against the wall, a look of absolute relief slackening his face.

“Release him from his pact and find someone new,” I encouraged the demon.

She paused for a moment, thinking. “On one condition. He must bring me new men every fortnight until I chose a new husband.”

The captain made a face.

“Sounds fair to me,” Kar Yee said.

“Only if you give me your word that you will not kill him, or the men he brings,” I said. Then added, “Or anyone else on this boat.”

“I give you my word and solemn oath,” she said.

I nodded, then spoke to Christie. “Go on. Promise her you'll bring her potential husbands.”

“How am I supposed to do that?”

“You'll think of a way. Start your own ‘hedonists cruise'—I don't care.” The local Hellfire Club would be all over that shit; he could make a small fortune.

“All right, I promise,” the captain said unhappily.

I looked at Lon. “Can we trust her?”

“She's not lying.”

“
I
do not break my promises,” Onna said, slanting accusing eyes toward Christie.

A loud noise made me jump. It took me a moment to realize that it was a horn blaring, and it was coming from outside the yacht. Jupe stood on the bunk and stuck his face in the porthole window. “Coast Guard! We're saved!”

A collective sigh of relief circled the room. Holy Mother of God, was I happy.

“You'd better hurry,” Lon said.

Yeah. Probably not wise to have a demonic monster trapped inside the boat while we were being rescued.

Lon skirted the trap and stood guard in front of Kar Yee and Jupe, flare gun in hand, while I palmed his pocketknife . . . just in case. Then I did my best to look at all three pairs of Onna's eyes and said, “I accept your oath and honor mine in return. You are free to go.”

I swiped one bare foot across a corner of the triangle, breaking the binding.

Onna shook herself like a wet dog and jumped out of the trap. Quick as a whip, she lunged at Christie and pinned the man to the wall. He shouted out in terror and turned his head to the side.

Onna wrapped webbed fingers around his chin and forced him to look up at her. “You broke all three of my hearts, Richard. If you fail to honor this new oath to me, this time I will tear your skin from your bones and bury you alive at the bottom of the sea.”

“Sounds reasonable,” he mumbled.

“Goodbye, Richard. I will see you in a fortnight.”

She spun around and surveyed the room, then bowed her heads at me, one after the other. “If we meet again, I will hold you in regard as an honest mage.”

Awesome, and God I hoped that never happened.

And with that, she exited the room and disappeared down the hallway as a muffled voice called out to the
Baba Yaga
through a megaphone.

•   •   •

It took hours to sort everything out with the Coast Guard. Lon gave them an official statement about the lightning strike—omitting details regarding both Jupe's and the captain's knacks and, of course, Onna. While Christie led them around for an inspection of the yacht's damage, we waited for a dispatched towboat to haul the dead
Baba Yaga
away. Once we got back to La Sirena, Christie was taken to the hospital for concussion tests. He started to tell us goodbye, but took one look at the displeasure on Lon's face and thought better of it.

After seeing Kar Yee back to her car, Lon, Jupe, and I piled in Lon's SUV and headed back home. The dashboard clock said it was after nine. It felt like one of the longest days of my life.

“Seat warmers, please,” I begged. My clothes were still a little damp beneath the blanket the Coast Guard had provided.

“On it,” Lon said as he fiddled with controls and pulled out of the nearly empty boardwalk parking lot onto Ocean Avenue. Everything around was closed and dark, apart from the lights crowning the walls of Brentano Gardens Amusement Park across the street.

“Okay, lay it on me,” Jupe said from the backseat. “How much trouble am I in?”

“I haven't decided yet,” Lon said as headlights from a passing car beamed slices of light across his face. “But it's probably going to involve manual labor and all of your weekends until Christmas spent indoors.”

Jupe sighed dramatically. “I thought so. I bet Kar Yee never wants to spend time with us again.” Oh, he was probably right about that. He blew out a long breath and crossed his arms over his chest. “I wish we'd never gone.”

Dammit. Even though he'd acted like an asshat today, I hated seeing him all dejected and mopey. He was a hot mess, sure, and I knew his dad was secretly fantasizing about dumping him on the side of the road, but I just couldn't help it: the kid turned me into Silly Putty.

“Look on the bright side,” I said. “We did learn a few things today.”

“Like that I was right about the mermaid ghost?”

God help us, we'd never hear the end of that.

“Like that your knack doesn't last forever,” I said. “And you might not be able to correct a command once you've given it.”

“In other words, never tell someone they're brainless when I'm using my knack.”

“No,” Lon corrected. “Never use it in anger.”

“Or carelessly,” I added.

“Just don't use it at all,” Lon said gruffly.

Jupe grimaced. “I'm actually okay with that. But I do have one request.”

“What's that?” Lon asked.

“Let's forget about buying a boat.”

“Forgotten.”

Jupe stuck his head between our seats. “Instead, I think we should bring the water to us. How 'bout a swimming pool in the backyard? You know, like Jack's? An infinity pool.”

“Not a chance,” Lon said.

“Hot tub?”

“How about we just go home, light a fire in the fireplace, and watch a movie?” I said.

“Wine,” Lon added. “Lots and lots of wine.”

Jupe raised his hand. “Only if I can pick the movie.”

“Fine,” I said, reaching back to twine my fingers around his. “Which movie?”

“It's an Italian horror flick from 1973. It's about a photographer who falls under the spell of a witch.” He waggled his eyebrows.

“Sounds familiar,” Lon said, darting his eyes toward mine.

“What's it called?” I asked.

“
Baba Yaga,
” Jupe said with a grin.

I groaned as Lon slowly shook his head at Jupe in the rearview mirror. “I should've sold you to the Russians when I had the chance.”